That Pain to Miss
by HelenahJay
Summary: Carlisle told Edward it was his decision to try and extract the venom from Bella's wrist in the ballet studio. Edward decided not to. E/B, Post-Twilight AU, canon couples.
1. Empty and Cold

It's been dark around the clock for three weeks straight, and I feel like I'm starting to go insane. The stark landscape of the Richardson Mountains stretches around me, visible to my heightened sight even without a moon overhead. There are caribou nearby, making my throat itch, but I can't bring myself to get to my feet to go after them.

The rough texture of the log cabin wall presses at my back through the scratchy quilt draped pointlessly around my shoulders. The temperature is so far below zero that the thermometer leaning above the stove inside appears to have given up. Jasper tapped at it hopefully this morning, but the mercury didn't budge.

It seems strange that I'm so aware of some things: the wind whispering in trees forty miles away; the scent of those damn caribou. Yet here, out of doors in the coldest place on earth, the temperature doesn't bother me at all. The isolation, though, that's definitely getting on my nerves.

Over the last few months, as the dark set in and the ground began to freeze, Alice brought me every DVD the general store in Inuvik rents. My attention span is like a gnat though and the stories seem meaningless, tedious. She pouted slightly at my disinterest and eventually gave up. And so I sit out here, day after night in the endless dark, hunting only when Jasper compels me. Because what else am I going to do?

Warm light suddenly spills out onto the porch as the door to the cabin opens and Alice pokes her head out.

"I can hear you without you coming out here, you know," I growl, sounding petulant, childish, even to my own ears.

Alice is undeterred, slipping out and closing the cabin door behind her. She looks ridiculous, wearing a floor-length Victorian nightgown paired with snow boots and one of those Russian hats with the furry ear flaps.

"I want you to see my face when I say this," she says, scowling, tiny hands bunched into fists on her hips. "It is time for you to snap out of this. Jasper and I have been patient long enough. One more month, Bella, and we can try taking you into town. But in the meantime, you really need to get a grip. You can't just sit out here day after day moping. It's not going to make anything better."

I loop a lock of hair around my finger, examining it for split ends. An old habit, now rendered meaningless.

Alice sighs, and looks less cross. The fight leaks out of her a little. A long silence stretches between us, filled with all the things we have spent eleven months not saying. I'm tired. Not physically, but emotionally exhausted. I don't have the strength to keep it all inside me anymore.

"He left me, Alice. He did this to me, and then he left me."

"Oh, sweetheart." Alice sinks to sit beside me, crossing her ankles and taking one of my hands in hers. "He left all of us."


	2. It keeps me alive

Alice and Jasper brought me here to the Arctic Circle while I was still consumed by the fire of the change. Running across the snow, taking turns to carry me while I writhed in agony. I remember nothing but the pain.

When I awoke, it was like the worst of all fevers began to subside, leaving me aching and limp. And in its place, a tidal wave of new sensations. Deafening noise, blinding light, and a thirst that burned in my throat as if I'd crawled across the Arizona desert on my hands and knees for days.

"It's okay," Alice's voice sounded more musical than ever, soothing. "You're safe, Bella. You're okay."

My eyelids were heavy as they fluttered open. I could feel every thread in the blanket beneath me. Alice held my hand, leaning forward from the wooden rocker in which she sat. Jasper sat on the end of the bed, his features calm in a way that I'd never seen them before, but his skin...the scars! What had happened to him? I stared at them both, so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined given my useless human sight.

Alice looked uncertain, glancing over her shoulder briefly at Jasper. "Bella? Do you feel all right?"

No. I most certainly did not feel all right. Something was very wrong. I looked around the room again. Low ceiling, thick dark curtains pulled across the windows, the only light coming from a fire blazing on the far side of the room. I'd never been here before.

Anxiety started to well up inside me, flickers of memories, like scenes from a half-remembered movie. The ballet studio, James' smirk, the searing pain. Carlisle binding my leg. Edward's grief-stricken voice crying, "_I can't_". I gasped. Jasper placed a hand on my ankle, and a wave of calm rolled out over me like a blanket.

"Where is he?" My new voice sounded alien. Like a professional recording, like a singer autotuned slightly beyond recognition. "Where is Edward? Did James...?"

Alice pressed a hand to my cheek. Her touch, no longer icy, felt strangely unwelcome. I had pieces of a puzzle and couldn't put them together right. "James is gone, Bella. We destroyed him. You don't need to worry."

Jasper's calming influence was making me feel drugged, suffocated. "Stop doing that!" I snapped. "I don't understand. Where's Edward?" Jasper drew back to the doorway.

"I'm gonna get some boots for her. She'll need to go soon," he said quietly to Alice as he left the room.

In his absence, the anxiety started to blossom into panic. I sat upright and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I was wearing soft flannel pyjamas that I didn't recognize, and they felt clammy, damp. I kept getting distracted by noises. There was an owl in a tree outside somewhere, and possibly a mouse in the attic. Alice rocked back in her chair, rubbing at her forehead with one hand. For a vampire, she looked exhausted.

I looked down at my hands in my lap, my skin pale, impossibly smooth. I stared in fascination at my wrist, running a fingertip over the glittering silver crescent scar. My patience was gone.

"Where. Is. Edward?"

She sighed deeply. "I don't know", she finally managed, her voice twisted into something agonizing. "He ran, Bella. He ran as soon as he realized you were changing. Emmett chased him for a bit, but he lost him somewhere in Mexico. Edward's the fastest. Emmett didn't really stand a chance."

Nothing was making sense. He was supposed to be here.

"I've been looking for him," she gestured vaguely at her temple. "But it's so unclear. I _think_ he's in South America, but I can't be certain. He keeps changing his mind. Emmett and Rose flew to Rio yesterday. We'll find him, Bella. We will."

I pressed a palm against my stomach, nausea overtaking me. Alice was beside me in an instant, pushing my hair away from face and rubbing soothing circles on my back.

"You need to hunt, Bella. Jasper's going to take you."

Jasper had reappeared, placing a pile of folded clothes on the end of the bed and slipping out again discreetly. Alice began to unbutton my top, continuing to murmur soft reassurances. I could do nothing as she dressed me in layers of wool, a heavy plaid shirt. Every thought, every emotion hollowed out into a series of horrifying, gut wrenching realizations.

I was dead. I was reborn. And I was alone.


	3. I gave it my soul

At first, I assumed Edward would come back.

Something had obviously happened, I told myself. He would be here if he could. So in the meantime I just had to concentrate. I had to be the best vampire I could. For Edward, for when he got back.

The first few weeks were a mind-numbing routine. I was thirsty all of the time, something Jasper was at pains to tell me was completely normal. We hunted grizzly bears, wolves and moose in the boreal forest surrounding the cabin. I became increasingly disgusted with myself.

"I'm just a parasite!" I complained to Alice, "and a messy one at that! I do nothing but eat."

"You're not a parasite, you're a predator," she said tactfully, helping me to my feet as she kicked away the elk carcass I had mangled. "And it will get easier. You're already loads better than when you started. Jasper is really impressed."

"You're a terrible liar."

Jasper was very patient. Day after day, he spent hours in the forest with me high above the MacKenzie River, helping me adjust to my new way of life. I no longer crashed into trees while running, and I stopped breaking most things I picked up, but it felt like mediocre progress.

Alice gave me an impulsive squeeze. "It takes time, Bella. And we've got plenty of that."

Guilt washed over me. Here I was, depressed and complaining, when the two of them had dropped everything to move to the Arctic indefinitely and help me adjust. I didn't deserve a sister like Alice, and I told her so.

"Don't be ridiculous. I wouldn't be anywhere else."

No one had mentioned Edward since that first night. There was no phone in the cabin, but Alice and Jasper had a laptop, and Alice gave me regular updates from Carlisle and Esme. They had packed up the house in Forks and moved to Chicago, claiming publicly that Carlisle had been offered a job that was too good to refuse.

Alice would occasionally swing the computer around to show me pictures that Emmett had emailed. Rose somewhere along the Inca Trail; Emmett with his foot on the neck of an alligator he had wrestled. I looked at the photos with disinterest. If they were sending holiday snaps, they hadn't found Edward. Nothing else mattered.

Carlisle and Rose had worked hard on the cover story. My truck was crashed off a ravine a few hours north of Phoenix. Carlisle had taken a Jane Doe from a local morgue, and ensured that the truck became a fiery inferno that would prevent my "body" from being correctly identified. As far as Charlie and Renee knew, I'd become a victim of my own teen angst. Alice told me that Esme and Rose had attended the funeral. I swore at her that I never wanted to hear anything about it, and slammed the door to my room so hard that a hinge shot off and through a window.

Alice came into my room without knocking.

"Jasper made me this cabin, Bella. He made it with his own bare hands. So I will thank you not to smash it, regardless of what you're going through right now."

I stared open-mouthed at this revelation, reaching out instinctively to run my hand across the rough log wall. I felt immediately sheepish, like a small child after a particularly unreasonable tantrum.

"He _made_ this?"

Alice shrugged. "We'd had a fight. He was making it up to me. That's not the point."

If I'd had a heart still, it might have cracked wide open. Spending so much time with the two of them had awed me. Their quiet devotion, their selfless love for each other. It was hard to picture them fighting. I felt suddenly and hopelessly alone.

"I've lost everything, Alice."

"No you haven't," she insisted fiercely. "You have gained a _family_, Bella. It's only a matter of time and we can move to Chicago, and live with Carlisle and Esme again... and Rose & Emmett will come back..." she trailed off slightly. The elephant in the room did a little dance. Alice, ever the optimist.

"And it's hard to imagine right now, but you'll be able to at least see Charlie and Renee from a distance. See that they are okay, that they are moving on from their grief."

I nodded slightly, inexplicably wishing I could cry. It felt like it would be cathartic, or at least appropriate.

"I won't smash things anymore, I promise. I'll get this temper under control."

Alice hugged me tightly.

"It seems impossible, I know. But I've seen it, Bells. I've seen us in New York. I've seen us shopping at Barneys!"

I shuddered a little. What fresh hell that would be, but Alice's enthusiasm was a balm.

"It won't always be like this," she insisted.

"He's not coming back, is he?" My voice sounded tiny, like a child's.

Alice didn't answer. 

**This story is largely complete, and with my amazing beta. It will be about 20 chapters in total, and I hope to post them over the next two or three weeks. Let me know what you think. It's my first story in this fandom, and I'd love the feedback.  
**


	4. So that I could survive

362 days, each one crossed off with an eyebrow pencil on a curling, yellowed calendar advertising NorthMart - Northwest Territories Trusted Community Store of Choice. 362 days, and Alice and Jasper are the only people I've seen, vampire or otherwise.

Alice comes bounding into my room with a new pair of snow boots tied up with a garish pink ribbon, and an excited grin on her face. "It's time, Bella. I'm clear on it now. We can take you into town."

It's the first time I've experienced something akin to hope since dying.

Even Jasper looks happy. "I wouldn't get too excited, Bella. Inuvik is like Forks, but darker and covered in snow."

"You're sure?" I quiz Alice, grasping her upper arms, "I'm really not going to hurt anyone?"

"Well, you're hurting me," she grumbles, wriggling free of my newborn grip, and smiling ruefully, "but no, we are totally good to go."

We dress carefully. We may not feel the cold, but we need to look the part. Jasper has been preparing me for this day for weeks. We approach the main street slowly and on foot. His calming influence, which I've resented and struggled against in past, I'm now absurdly grateful for. I am nervous as hell.

The scent of humanity is nothing I could have readied for though. So much _more_ than the animal blood I've come to subsist on. My senses are flooded. I feel both terribly weak, and unbelievably powerful at the same time. I hold my breath, my mouth filled with venom, every nerve in my body on fire. Jasper hooks my arm through his, and pats it comfortingly. "You know we can have you out of here in a heartbeat," he murmurs in my ear. "No pun intended."

The joke makes me smile a little. I feel slightly more in control.

We turn a corner, and come immediately face to face with a mother and two little girls bundled up in snowsuits, hats and scarves. One of the girls bends down in front of us to adjust the lace of her boot. The scent is overwhelming. Her snowsuit is purple, she has a green velvet ribbon in her hair, her blood sounds like a rushing river. My throat is ravaged and dry, and this tiny little girl is an oasis.

"You're okay, Bella." Alice whispers next to me, one hand on my hair. "You won't hurt her."

The words are like a punch to the stomach. I can hear her saying the very same thing to Jasper, about me. It seems like an eternity ago.

_Edward_. Where is Edward? Why isn't he here now?

The family moves on and gets into a rugged 4x4, which pulls out into the snow. The scent dissipates. I take a strangled breath.

Alice is doing a happy little dance and clapping her hands excitedly. Jasper still has his hand on my arm, but he looks relaxed.

"See, Bella! You totally did it. You were awesome."

It's a hollow victory without him.

"I need to hunt," I say quietly, and pull away from Jasper before breaking into a run.


	5. Keeping me safe in these chains

I sit, forty feet off the ground on a wide bough, swinging my legs and looking out over the rich, dark canopy of the forest. I don't really remember being scared of heights when I was alive, but this newfound love of sitting in the tops of trees comes solely from Edward.

I've lost track of how long I've been up here when I feel movement and smell Jasper climbing swiftly up from below, slipping silently onto a branch slightly above and to my left.

"You shouldn't feel bad at how hard it is, you know." He plucks a twig idly, twirling it slowly between his long, pale fingers. "I've been at this for over fifty years, and I still find it excruciating some days. You succeeded where I've so often failed."

"It's not that," I sigh, bringing one foot up to my perch, wrapping my arms around my leg and leaning my temple against my knee. "I mean, not killing her was the hardest thing I have ever done, don't get me wrong."

Jasper nods in sympathy. I wonder if he fed as much as I did on the way here.

"It's just...It made me realize what he went through to be near me. The impossibility of it seems...overwhelming." This is the first time I've mentioned Edward to Jasper. His face clouds a little, and his thoughts seem far away all of a sudden.

"And I just don't understand, having been through that, why he would leave. Why now?"

Jasper lets out a long sigh, and runs a hand through his hair. He is quiet for a long time, the only sounds around us are from the wind in the branches and the wildlife on the ground.

"I don't pretend to understand my brother, and I don't know why he ran."

I nod softly without looking up at him. I know this. If Alice or Jasper had reasons, if they could reassure me at all, I know they would.

"What I do know," Jasper murmurs, reaching out a hand and placing it comfortingly on my shoulder, "is that he would _never_ have wanted this for you."

A lump rises in my throat. I shake off Jasper's hand and tuck myself more tightly into a ball, tracing my fingers along the seam of my sweater, counting my breaths. Trying not to cry out in pain.

Jasper looks perplexed, and I feel an involuntary peace spread through my clenched limbs.

"Don't _do_ that," I growl.

"Then hear me out!" he snaps back. My eyes widen in surprise. Jasper never snaps. "Seriously, Bella. You've been an emotional wreck for a year, and I've felt every minute of it. Don't begrudge me trying to help occasionally." His voice sounds strained. I apologize immediately, and hope that he can feel the guilt rolling off me now.

"I'm not here to make excuses for Edward," he continues, finally, "but I can tell you a little bit about the way his mind works. When I say he wouldn't have wanted this for you, I don't mean for a second that he wouldn't have wanted _you._"

"It amounts to the same thing, though, doesn't it?" There's a full moon overhead, enough light to illuminate Jasper's features. His eyebrows are drawn together in concentration.

"Not exactly. You see, Edward and Carlisle have spent the better part of a century arguing over the finer points of particular aspects of theology." This confuses me. Edward told me a little of Carlisle's story, and I can see how the whole religion thing would be important to him, but to Edward?

"They argue about God?"

"More specifically, they argue about vampires. What we are, what our essential _nature_ is. Mostly, they spend an almost ludicrous amount of time debating whether we have souls."

"_Souls?_" I stare at Jasper in disbelief. This is definitely not the conversation I expected to be having with the scent of that little girl still flaming in the back of my throat.

"Carlisle believes that we are no different to humans, that we are all God's creatures, in some way or another. Edward believes we are monsters, damned to hell regardless of how we live our lives."

"That's crazy. None of you are monsters."

Jasper shrugs noncommittally. "It's a pretty arcane argument, and I'm paraphrasing. My point is, that's what Edward genuinely believes. And if he had the opportunity to prevent you from being damned, well, that's what he would have wanted."

I chuckle skeptically. "Whatever, Jasper. It's all completely academic, isn't it? James took that choice away from both of us. And regardless of Edward's views on eternal hell and damnation, the fact remains: he isn't here. That's all that really matters."

Jasper looks at me strangely, as if he's about to say something more, as if I have missed the point. But before I can ask, he flicks the twig away into the dark, reaching behind himself to push up off the trunk of the tree into a crouch.

"You did really well today, Bella," he says, patting my knee softly, and then slipping down and out of sight.


	6. Precious pain

We spend another three months near Inuvik. At first the two of them accompany me on every trip into town, Jasper poised like a coiled spring in case anything goes wrong. But gradually, it gets easier, just as Alice promised it would. The thirst still rages. I have to hold my breath for long stretches, which makes it impossible to talk to anyone, and I have to hunt immediately after. But slowly, things improve.

My new goal is to give Jasper and Alice some privacy. I am painfully aware of what they've forgone by being here at my side for so long. "It's all relative, Bella," Jasper assures me. "After this long together, a few months is sort of meaningless." But I feel the guilt keenly, and so I work hard at acclimating, and after a few more weeks of chaperoned trips, I swear that I am capable of going to the movies for the evening by myself. Inuvik's one-screen theatre has only been open a week, and Jasper frets that it will mean too many people in an enclosed space. Alice sits quietly in front of the fire for a while, thinking about my plan, until a slow smile spreads across her face. "Jazz, it's okay."

They both fuss over me like new parents, making me promise that I won't breathe as much as possible, and run if I have to. Alice squeezes my hand tightly. "I'll be watching," she swears earnestly, "If anything changes, we'll be there."

I roll my eyes at her with slightly more confidence than I feel. "Don't be watching _too_ closely." I poke her in the arm. "That is definitely _not_ why I am trying to leave you alone."

Alice winks at me. "Bella, I am an _awesome_ multi-tasker."

The evening is a qualified success. I don't remember anything of the film, because I have to concentrate so very hard. Every muscle in my body strains, and I break off one of the arms on my brand-new theatre seat, tucking it guiltily under the seat in front. The willpower it takes is extraordinary, but the pride I feel as I leave and run home more than makes up for it. I will not be a monster, I have not relinquished my soul.

My "graduation" is the annual Inuvik Muskrat Jamboree, a four day celebration that includes muskrat skinning, log sawing, and dog-team races. The whole town turns out to welcome spring, and after three days of festivities surrounded by hundreds of people Alice announces we can finally leave the frozen north.

Though it felt like a prison at times, I find I am sad to see Jasper close up the cabin. It's the only home I've known in this life, and I'm so uncertain about the future that I don't want to leave it behind.

We run south at night through the Yukon, and I'm staggered at the distance the two of them covered a year ago to bring me to safety. Jasper makes me stop every hour to hunt. I feel overfed and disgusting, like eating a Thanksgiving dinner on top of Christmas lunch.

We time it to reach Vancouver after dark, and make our way through the outer streets carefully before checking into a hotel. The feel of a city is completely different. I'm over-sensitized, itchy, raw. Jasper and Alice retreat to an adjacent suite. I can hear people in almost every room in the hotel. It's distracting and disorienting. I click on the television to try and drown it out.

The gleaming chrome and marble bathroom is like an alien planet after the cabin and its rustic outdoor tub, and I am struck dumb by the mirrored wall. This is the first time I have seen my new reflection, and I am absolutely unrecognizable. My hair looks like something out of shampoo commercial, falling in dark, shiny waves over my shoulders. I strip hurriedly out my clothes, staring in appalled fascination at my strong, pale limbs and flawless opalescent skin. I press one palm against the glass, and this stunning stranger lifts a hand up to press against mine. My eyes have taken on the Cullen's familiar golden hue, and I'm so glad to have missed seeing them when they were red.

I pull the hotel bathrobe around me and drag an armchair over to the sliding door, spending the rest of the night with my bare feet propped up on the balcony rail, watching the street lights unfolded in front of me, listening to every note in the symphony of the city.

Alice books us night flights to Chicago for the following day.

Being back in civilization agrees with Alice immensely. I start to realize what a sacrifice it has been for her to be so isolated. She disappears first thing and returns to the suite by late afternoon laden down with shopping bags and boxes. Two bellboys trail her into the room, equally burdened.

"I really, really wanted to take you, Bella. But I thought it would be fastest this way," she says as she unzips a brand new, empty suitcase on my bed, and starts hauling brightly colored clothes from the shopping bags and clipping the tags off them as she packs them into the case. "You were going to protest a lot, and we don't have _that_ much time. Plus, there's still New York." Cosmetics, shoes, underwear, hosiery, all neatly stowed in the bag. Finally she tosses a pair of designer jeans in distressed denim and an unbearably soft grey cashmere sweater at me. "Here, these are for the flight."

I'm at a loss. "What are you talking about? What is all of this?"

Alice looks at me like I've left my brain in the Yukon. "Duh, Bella. Clothes. You weren't planning to bring lumberjack chic to Chicago were you?" She waves at the dishevelled pile of plaid and wool, and the filthy pair of boots, that I've abandoned on the bathroom floor in favor of the hotel robe. To be honest, I hadn't given it the slightest thought. Now that I realize what she's done I start to poke around in the suitcase. Absolutely nothing I just watched Alice pack looked like something I would wear, but Alice swiftly zips the Samsonite closed and wheels it out of the room. "No time, Bella-bear," she calls sweetly over her shoulder, "Let's not miss our flight."

Jasper and Alice argued on the way here about whether we should fly or not, but to be honest, being shut in the aircraft with all these people doesn't seem any more or less uncomfortable than going to the movie theatre. I hold my breath, close my eyes and feign sleep, and before long the bright lights of Chicago are rising up below us.

Alice sprints ahead of us from the gate, every muscle visibly straining to force herself to move at a human speed, and suddenly the crowd parts a little and I see them. Alice has leaped at Carlisle, arms thrown around his neck, and Esme's whole face is lit up with joy. I stumble a little and slow down. Jasper turns, and I plaster what I hope is a convincing smile across my face.

He looks at me apologetically, something like sympathy crossing his gorgeous features, and I realize only now that some small part of me still assumed Edward would be here.


	7. Everybody's got a reason

Carlisle and Esme live in an enormous brownstone, a block from Lake Michigan. If I'd thought the Cullen home in Forks was impressive, I really had no idea. This house is gorgeous and understated, packed with priceless pieces of art and furniture that, while clearly antique, manage somehow to feel comfortable and homey.

Esme shows me to a room on the second floor, and looks almost nervous as she opens the door. I let out a little squeal of delight. The room has huge bay windows with a windowseat, and warm afternoon light is flooding in. There are floor to ceiling bookshelves, packed with books and cds. On one wall two stunning black and white photos are hanging, one of Charlie and one of Renee. The bed is made up with rich, cream linens. I flit around the room at top speed, touching everything, picking things up and putting them down again, gasping in wonder. I run a finger across the framed photographs. They are perfect. Charlie looks just as I remember him.

I whirl back toward Esme, who is smiling warmly, her insecurity evaporated.

"Esme! How did you do this? Some of these are _my_ books! This is my _cactus!"_

She laughs a glorious laugh, like windchimes. I leap across the room to swing her into a hug.

"I was so worried. I wasn't sure if you would want reminders of your other life, but I know that I did after my change. I wanted to keep that part of myself close by, a tangible piece of my humanity. It wasn't hard. I helped Charlie pack your things, after the funeral, so I told him I would take care of donating them."

I sink onto the bed, my fingers luxuriating in the thick covers, overcome with mixed emotions. I love this thoughtful, caring woman so much. Esme sits beside me.

"I also wasn't sure about the bed. Edward never had one but personally, I like to lie down now and again. To read, listen to music..." she drifts off, studying my face. I try to remain impassive, but it's too hard.

"Did Edward live here with Carlisle? After his change?"

Esme sweeps my hair back away from my face, and rests a comforting arm around my shoulders. "Edward has lived in this house a number of times," she says quietly, "but never in this room."

I nod, but don't look at her, suddenly choked up at the thought of him here.

"Bella, Edward is my son, in every way that matters. But you, you're my daughter. Edward is old enough to understand the decisions he is making right now and to live with the consequences. You, on the other hand, are young. You need your family around, and you need to know how much we all want you to be here."

She squeezes me to her, and then leaves me to think in peace.

My second favorite room in the house quickly becomes the kitchen. Esme, it turns out, is a wonderful cook, and I discover that the activity is just as soothing to me as when I was alive, even if I can no longer enjoy the spoils. Esme volunteers at a local women's shelter, and the baking and frozen meals go there. There is something inordinately comforting about standing side by side in the kitchen, rolling pastry, or kneading dough. And while we work she tells me stories about their past. A stretch in West Berlin after the war, living in upstate New York in the 60s. The things she has seen, the travel, I am awed at what lies ahead of me, what I might be able to do when I'm strong enough.

Talking about the past makes me curious, and I quiz the whole family about what they've seen and experienced. Jasper tells me stories of the newborn wars in the South. My heart breaks for this beautiful man, covered in scars, for the horrors he has witnessed. He reaches out one afternoon and tips my chin up with one forefinger.

"Don't be sad about it, Bella," he murmurs softly. "I'm telling you because it's part of our history. But it's just that...history. It ceased to mean anything the day Alice found me in that diner."

Alice nods fiercely from the sofa beside him, twining her hand in his.

My favorite room in the house is the music room. At first I avoided it like the plague, because the shiny black Steinway baby grand was clearly his, and it just made me think about my lullaby. Then I discovered the record collection. Shelves upon shelves of vinyl, dating back to some of the very first commercially produced gramophone records. It's like being let loose in a musical museum. I suddenly don't care that they obviously belong to Edward. I spend hours lying on my back on the floor in front of the turntable, fixated with the Andrews Sisters, Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter.

Playing these records must bring back memories for the others, and they take to spending time in here too. Jasper is currently working his way through a stack of new civil war histories that were published while we were in the north. He is tucked up in a dark leather club chair opposite me, his long legs draped over one arm and an annoyed scowl on his face. Inaccuracies irritate Jasper.

"Jazz, who are the guys in the painting with Carlisle?"

Above the fireplace there is a dark oil canvas depicting Carlisle in Italy with three other men. Jasper looks up in surprise, staring at the painting as if he hasn't paid any attention to it in a long time.

"That's Aro, Marcus and Caius. They're the Volturi."

"What's a Volturi?"

"A very old, very powerful family. They're as close as we get to a royal family, I guess. Carlisle lived with them for a while in Italy. He didn't tell you?"

"He told me about Italy. Not about those guys."

Jasper's face clouds over, as if he's not sure how much he should be telling me.

"I guess, well, they've taken on a certain responsibility for our ... community. They enforce the rule."

"We have rules?" This was news to me. Was there a rule book? Was I supposed to know a handshake?

"Just one. We have to keep our existence a secret."

I think about Edward, and his veiled remarks about the danger I was in, knowing what he was.

I don't ask any more questions.

After six months, Chicago becomes a kind of home. One afternoon as I'm taking gingerbread loaf out of the oven Esme asks me whether I am happy.

I pause for a long time before answering.

There are lots of things here that make me happy. Carlisle is teaching me to play chess. Jasper is teaching me to speak Spanish. I've discovered that even shopping with Alice can be fun, if I let her treat me a little like a dress-up doll and just enjoy her company without complaining.

I love this family.

But there are empty places in my heart that long for Edward, and I know I am not the only one who feels them.

If I'm fast enough when I come back from my evening walks around the lake, I can sometimes catch them arguing. They sense me almost immediately, and the house goes still, but I know. No one will talk about Edward, and the silence is becoming louder than I can bear.


	8. To abandon their plan

**A/N: I am getting a lot of questions asking if Edward is ever making an appearance. Fear not, darling readers. He definitely is, just not yet! **

x-X-x-X-x

Alice _loves_ Christmas.

The house looks like Santa's grotto threw up in it. An eight-foot Douglas fir in the entrance way is sagging under the weight of hundreds of baubles and miles of tinsel. Mistletoe adorns every doorway, as if the couples in this house need any excuse. Every single room contains advent calendars, Christmas stockings, twinkling lights and wreaths.

I think seriously about buying a lock for my bedroom door, but so far Alice has managed to respect my boundaries.

Esme convinces me to go shopping with her, somehow sensing that I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of spending the Cullens' money on their own presents, but have no real alternative. At least Esme is sensible with her gift-giving. Alice seems to have packed every closet in the house with packages, complete with angry little notes taped to the outside threatening us with all means of bodily harm if we peek. Even the notes have Christmas angels on them.

She's so excited about Rosalie and Emmett returning from Europe that if it weren't for her largely indestructible physique I would worry that she might burst something. So she frightens the crap out of me one evening by dropping the Le Creuset she's been helping me wash and dry. It smashes with a resounding crack on the floor. Alice looks devastated. All I can think is _Edward_. Something must have happened to Edward.

Emmett is the one who breaks the news. He phones from Dublin. Carlisle takes the call in his study, and I can only hear his side of the conversation, which seems to be deliberately forced, his words too carefully chosen.

Alice is desperately trying to smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

"It's okay," she says, and I think she's trying to convince herself more than me. "I mean, they don't always come home for Christmas, and I'm sure they're having an amazing time in Ireland. Europe is incredible, Bella. You're going to love it when you go."

Alice is sitting on the floor, surrounded by a maelstrom of wrapping paper and ribbons. She's wearing little holly-shaped earrings. Alice _loves_ Christmas. There is no way Rosalie and Emmett would do this to her.

Then it hits me.

There is exactly one reason why Rosalie would do this, and that reason is me. I can hear Rosalie's voice snarling all those months ago as we prepared to flee James. "_Why should I? What is she to me except a menace?_" It is like a punch to the gut. I sit down abruptly, not sure I can continue to stand.

Alice is still reasoning with herself. "I mean, I'm sure they'll be home by New Year, and we can have presents then...Maybe we can have _two _Christmases. Do you think Carlisle will let me have a new tree? This one may have wilted by then..."

All this time, and I have been blaming Edward for driving a wedge into this extraordinary family. How stupid I've been. It's not Edward that's ruined everything. He's gone because of me. Rosalie and Emmett are gone because of me. The Cullens are a broken family, and I'm the cause.

It will be difficult, I realize. I'll need to keep changing plans as fast as I can so that Alice doesn't see what I'm thinking of doing. I can only hope that her ruined Christmas will distract her a little so that she won't be paying as much attention to me.

I ride it out through our muted celebrations. Alice does her very best to inject some life into the holiday, but no one is buying. A small stack of unopened presents remain under the tree. Eventually Jasper scoops her up and carries her upstairs to their room. I hope that he can help.

I wait until the 27th, and then I visit Carlisle in his study. He's working on a medical journal article about blood poisoning, and he clicks his laptop shut when I slide into the chair opposite him. The room is decorated in dark wood, with hunter green walls and a roaring fire. I smile slightly at the cliche of Carlisle the Patriarch. He's wearing the dark blue sweater I bought him for Christmas, and I almost lose my nerve.

"What is it, Bella?"

I know I only have a few moments before this decision will dawn on Alice, and she will come hurtling back from whatever sale she is currently pillaging.

"I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am to you and Esme."

He waves a hand dismissively as if my words are completely unnecessary. "Bella, ..."

"No, wait. Let me get this out. You, all of you, have given me so much. You've given me the best possible start on an entirely new life. But I feel like...maybe just for a short while...I need to try living that life on my own."

Carlisle's forehead creases in concern.

"There's nothing wrong!" I rush to reassure him. "I love it here. I love the four of you more than I could ever express. You've created a family for me in a way that I never thought I'd get to experience. I just...I need to stretch my wings a little bit."

He nods slowly, and gets up, coming around to my side of the desk and leaning against it.

"Where will you go?"

"I've given this a little bit of thought, but tried not to fix my plans so that Alice couldn't see them. I wanted to talk to you first. I think, New York City. Alice has seen me there, and I've never been. It sort of seems like the right place to try and find yourself." I grin at him, hoping that he's buying this 'teenager wanting to explore the big wide world' routine I am attempting.

"Bella, you're a Cullen now, whether you take the name or not." He hands me a small black velvet case. "I was going to give you this for Christmas, but it wasn't ready in time." I prise the case open, and nestled on the black cloth inside is a silver locket, engraved with the family crest. I draw in a ragged breath. I have no words for the emotions sweeping over me.

Carlisle reaches for the necklace. "May I?"

I nod once, still unsure of my voice.

He takes the ends of the silver chain and I lift my hair out of the way so he can fasten it.

I click open the locket, but find it empty.

Carlisle smiles apologetically. "Esme wanted to put pictures of Charlie and Renee in there, but I'll confess I talked her out of it. I think you should choose for yourself what you carry close to your heart."

Suddenly I'm absurdly grateful for this patient, sensitive man, and throw my arms around his neck. He hugs me warmly.

"Thank you, Carlisle. It's beautiful."

"It's my pleasure. Now, I have one more thing to give you, and I want you to hear me out before you say no." I sink back in my chair as he walks around to the other side of his desk, pulling open one of the drawers and extracting a thick, cream envelope. He passes it across to me.

"These are the details of your access to our bank accounts, some identification, credit cards..."

My hand draws quickly back from the envelope as if burned.

"Carlisle, there's no way..."

"Let me finish, Bella. I know you are a strong, independent young woman, and that you want to make your own way in this world. I have no doubt that you are capable. But passing for human takes time, patience and practice. It will be a while before you'll be able to hold down a job, probably longer before you become an accomplished liar."

I look out the window of the study at the snow-covered trees. The season will turn, there will be sunshine on the way. I think about unexplained absences from work or school, the need to travel to hunt. Maybe I can claim I have some sort of rare disease.

"Physically, you're still a newborn. Your progress has been remarkable, but I saw the dent in the garage door. You're still making mistakes."

I turn back to Carlisle with a guilty expression. I was too lazy to walk back inside to press the button yesterday, so I just shoved the metal roller door. A little too forcefully, as it turned out. I meant to bang out the dent when he was out, but I forgot.

"And you still get so easily distracted."

This was definitely true. Alice finally threw a book at my head last week, in exasperation. "Just finish _one_, Bella!" she cried. "You leave them open all over the house. Just pick _one_ and finish it!"

I slump in my seat, feeling more and more like a resentful teenager.

"Bella, money is largely meaningless to us. But to you, it's a form of protection. While you don't have to work, you can keep yourself safe. And over time, you'll develop the skills you have to have to blend in. You won't always need us, though it goes without saying that we will always be here."

I pick up the envelope, running a finger along the stiff edge.

"Only I will see the statements, Bella," he says, in answer to my unspoken question. "No one else will know where you are."

I nod, and get to my feet, stuffing the envelope in the back pocket of my jeans, and embracing Carlisle tightly. "I love you so much, " I sob into his shoulder, because 'thank you' seems wholly inadequate.

The front door slams ferociously and Alice barrels into the room.

She would have tears in her eyes if that were possible. I know that. I know that I am breaking her silent heart.

"I am so sorry," I say pulling her close and holding her tightly to me. "I love you so much. You're my sister. That's never going to change."

Alice is gasping a little, making small hiccoughing sounds.

"But I have to go. I need to be on my own for a while. I need to get my head sorted out. You and Jasper, you need some time too. You've been babysitters long enough. Take a holiday," I try for a wry smile, "Get some sun."

Alice just shakes her head, and I gently pry her arms from around my waist and pass her to Carlisle. He gives me look which is somewhere between understanding and regret. "You know if you don't come back, we'll come find you." The way he says it, it feels like an embrace.

The long shadows of twilight stretch across the lawn as I head toward the treeline to stretch my legs before the desolation overwhelms me.


	9. How can I think of tomorrow

Bella the human may have been graceless and clumsy, but it turns out Bella the vampire loves to dance.

It's delicious torture, surrounding myself with so many heated human bodies, pulses racing, blood pounding in their veins. Assaulting the very ragged edges of my hunger. In the bowels of a club, bass thundering, hands pressing on hips, my mind gets too full to think of anything else.

I know it's a dangerous game. Night after night, I grind against them, barely restraining my strength or my thirst.

If I was still human, I imagine this sort of bender would mean drinking, drugs, the artificial stimulants I can smell racing through the blood around me. Self-destructive behavior is harder for the immortal. I have to find my own boundaries to push, venom flooding my mouth, as the music crashes over me and lights up the flesh and the heartbeats and the heat.

It's been three months since I left the Cullens, and it's fair to say I don't really see the point in being careful any more.

I let Alice's calls go to voicemail. They are always filled with false cheer, prying to see what I'm doing, even though she must already know. Optimism laced with unwanted pity and concern. I've at least learned from her messages that Rosalie and Emmett are back. One aspect of this stupid plan seems to have worked.

When I left Chicago, I thought I would spend time experiencing the Big Apple and then set out on my world travels. I had grand ideas about backpacking through Cambodia, Thailand, Laos. Spending time on the beach at night in Kerala, visiting cathedrals in Germany. I even bought copies of Lonely Planet guides, tagging pages with brightly-colored Post-its.

But as each day slid inexorably into the next, so too the motivation slid away. What was the point in travelling the world on your own with no one to share it with? Lonely Planet wasn't going to tell me where to hunt, noticeably lacking a section for "Vampire Travellers". The books began to gather dust in a corner of the tiny roach-infested studio apartment I'd rented. I knew it was silly, really, trying to save Carlisle's money, but I just hated not being able to take care of myself. I shopped for clothes in thrift stores. Alice left me horrified messages, begging to be allowed to courier me new outfits. I deleted them.

As the weather began to warm it was easier not to go out at all during the day. I wasn't hunting that often, and my thirst took on its own, discordant personality, driving me out of the apartment at night to surround myself with temptation.

I won't lie. I enjoy the attention. At night, my pale skin and crazy eyes don't seem as unusual, and as Edward once pointed out, everything about me is purpose-built to draw people in. I get propositioned every night. Every night, someone who isn't Edward tells me I'm beautiful. And it's something, even if it's nowhere near enough.

Night after night. Bar after club. An endless succession of sweat and desperation, and every time ending up always, miserably alone.

The seasons turn again, scarves wound tight around the necks of passers-by, and I finally bring myself to venture out during the day. I'm sitting in a deli, minding my own business with a cup of coffee cooling rapidly in front of me, when a perfectly manicured set of nails slams a copy of Post down on the table in front of me.

The pictures in the Page Six spread aren't great, but you can certainly tell it's me. The headline reads '_Bella of the Ball_'.

I look up into the furious, piercing black eyes of Rosalie Hale. She looks stunning, wrapped in a cream fur coat that would have PETA in conniptions. Her blond hair is swept up in a tight French roll, diamond earrings flashing in the cheap fluorescent light. The Rosalie I remember passed for a high school girl. Standing before me now is a cold, Upper East Side princess, and she is steaming mad.

"I've been patient," she seethes. "I really have."

"Hello to you too, Rosalie," I reply lightly, waving at the plastic chair opposite. "Take a seat." I have no idea how she found me, but if she is expecting passive, terrified little human Bella, she has another thing coming. Her glare is intimidating though, and I wind up looking at my lap, picking idly at the shredded black fishnet poking out from below my inappropriately short skirt.

"You're a moron," she spits, and grasps my upper arm tightly. I think briefly about resisting. I am still stronger than she is, but it will only cause a ridiculous scene and so I let her drag me from the store and across the block into the Park. Autumn leaves crunch under my boots, and my breath makes little puffs in front of my face.

As soon as we are alone she rounds on me, her eyes filled with hatred.

"You are being unforgivably stupid, and you are putting us all at risk."

"I didn't know there was a photographer there..." I begin. To be honest, I don't even know which night the photos were taken, or in which bar. They blur together.

A jogger, dressed in a bright red shell suit with a windburnt red nose to match, runs past us and looks back over his shoulder, tripping briefly before recovering his stride. I imagine we make quite the pair. Rosalie all pristine, clean glamor, and me looking like Courtney Love's bastard step-child.

"No, I can see how you might have missed that, what with your face all pressed up in that guy's neck, and with his hand halfway up your skirt. God, what are you _wearing_?" she snarls, taking in my appearance for the first time. Her voice is filled with undisguised contempt. She shakes her head slightly as if to clear it.

"If you want to _die_, Bella, go to Italy and do it properly. Don't bring the Volturi down on the rest of us, and don't break Charlie's heart by making him think you might still be alive."

The mention of his name feels like a slap. I sink to a park bench, and put my head in my hands.

Rosalie taps a sharp cream stiletto impatiently in front of me. "I don't care, really, whether you decide to destroy yourself or not," she hisses. " But I do care about you destroying my family, so you need to get your shit together, and you need to do it now."

Part of me wants to scream at her, scratch at her flawlessly made-up face. She's not my mother, she's not my anything. She's always hated me. She doesn't get to tell me what to do now.

But I owe it to Alice and Jasper, to Esme and Carlisle. I owe it to Charlie. I scrub at my eyes with the heel of my hand, it comes away covered in last night's eyeliner.

"Emmett's on his way to that rat hole you call a walk-up. He'll get your stuff. You're coming to stay with us."

I stare at her incredulously.

"Why on earth would I do that? You may be right about my behavior being too visible. But there is no way in hell I'm going to live with someone who can't stand me."

Rose snorts indelicately.

"You really are a moron." She turns on her heel and begins to stalk away. "Hurry up!" she snaps over her shoulder.

I examine my chipped black nail polish for a minute, thinking about my options. I could change cities. Hell, countries, even. Lay low for awhile.

Rosalie is a good hundred feet away and not slowing at all, but when she speaks I can still hear her as if she was standing next to me. "If that crest around your neck means anything, you will get to your feet, come with me, and stop dishonoring Carlisle's name."

In retrospect, she should have opened with that.


	10. With my sorrow in hand

It is wonderful to see Emmett again, despite the circumstances. His hug lifts me up off my feet, and he immediately shows me to the room where he has taken my meager collection of possessions. Rose and Emmett live in a spectacular two-story apartment overlooking Central Park. Even without asking, I can tell Esme has had a hand in the design. The floors are covered in rich Persian rugs, and the walls are decorated in deep warm reds and mahoganies. It is masculine enough to accommodate Emmett, and warm enough to thaw Rosalie's frozen demeanor.

"Thank you," I sigh, collapsing down onto the bed. Emmett sits on an overstuffed chaise opposite me, the fading sunlight lighting up his striking features. "You didn't have to do this, you know. You could have just sent me back to Carlisle and Esme."

"Would you have gone?" he asks, genuinely curious.

I gnaw ineffectually at a fingernail, staring at the ceiling. "Probably not."

"You think that you're the only one who has been through this, but you're wrong. After my change, it's fair to say I had a bit of trouble with the rules." He smiles ruefully at the memory. "Edward had his hands full."

My eyebrows shoot up at the mention of his name, but Emmett is unapologetic.

"My brother is being a douche right now. You know it, and I know it. But there's no point in tiptoeing around it, and no point in you throwing yourself in front of the Volturi because of it. It would be a total fucking waste." I realize I've missed his straightforward manner.

"I like the digs," I manage to grit out through a clenched jaw. I want the subject changed. No one talks to me about Edward, I don't want them to start now.

Emmett looks around the room as if he's seeing it for the first time, and then shrugs. "Rosie likes the city. It's a pig of a place to live because it takes so long to get anywhere to hunt, but we come here every now and again. Whatever makes her happy."

I snort. I can't imagine anything making Rosalie Hale happy.

"You got her all wrong, Bella. When you've both calmed down a bit, she can explain it to you."

He ambles out of the room.

Rosalie stomps in and throws a towel at my head. "Wash. Several times. And then throw everything you are wearing down the garbage chute. There are new clothes in the closet from Alice." She's gone before I can even open my mouth to protest.

The shower is a revelation. I stand under it for what seems like an eternity, washing every ounce of this year from my body. I feel strung out, hollow. Mostly I feel like a failure, and yet some small part of me is so infinitely glad to be back with my _family_ that nothing else matters. Not even Cruella de Hale.

Opening the closet, I discover Alice has been unusually restrained. I dress in a comfortable pair of jeans and a Jeter t-shirt and head downstairs. Rosalie and Emmett are sitting at the dining table. I guess that it's time for the family meeting. I try and head off some of the seemingly inevitable acrimony.

"I really am sorry," I say firmly to both of them, "and I'll apologize to Carlisle."

I realize then that Rosalie looks really weary, and a little bit unsure. The shadows beneath her eyes are a dark purple. She twists her engagement ring around and around on her finger. Emmett reaches out a hand to still her movements, and she smiles at him gratefully.

"Bella," she says to me finally, "did Edward ever tell you my story?"

I shake my head. "Only that Carlisle thought you might be..." I hesitate. The idea still makes me nauseous, even after all this time. "...a _companion_ for Edward."

Emmett roars with laughter. Even Rosalie manages a small smile.

"Yes," she smirks, "Carlisle was a little deranged."

So we sit, the three of us, while Rosalie tells me of her life during the Great Depression, her family, and her desperate wish for a child of her own. She tells me about Royce King. I notice Emmett's face cloud, and his grip on her hand becomes tighter. Her voice stays steady, as she tells me of her last night, of Carlisle's act of salvation, and of her subsequent revenge.

"Bella, you think that I hate you, but you're wrong. I hated the _idea_ of you in Forks. I thought Edward was taking an unforgivable risk, and jeopardizing the whole family's safety."

I nod slightly. I hadn't understood, before my change, just what insane odds Edward was running. His own willpower notwithstanding, even a papercut could have driven Jasper over the edge.

"I saw the way you looked at him. I knew that you wanted forever with him, and I knew you didn't have any idea what _forever_ really meant."

I think about the way the last ten months have slipped past me without my really being aware of it. Christmas seems like yesterday. I have no idea what forever means anymore.

"I didn't have a choice about this life, Bella. If I could have stopped you becoming like us, God knows, I would have. And it wouldn't have been because I didn't like you, or because I didn't think you were right for Edward. It would have been because I didn't want this for you. For anyone."

I grasp Rosalie's other hand, and she looks up at me with wide eyes.

"But I would have chosen it, Rosalie," I surprise myself with my certainty, my vehemence. "I would have. Then ... now. Knowing everything that I do. I would have chosen this a hundred times over if it meant being with Edward." A dejected laugh escapes me. "It doesn't really matter now, though, does it?"

Rosalie looks conflicted, her eyes flickering from Emmett to me and back again. Emmett shakes his head a little, and gets to his feet. "C'mon, little B. You're about as hungry as I've seen a vamp. I'm taking you to the Poconos. BEARS!"

Rosalie gives my hand a squeeze, and whispers, "I'm genuinely glad you're okay, Bella."

We drive West, Rosalie handling her sleek new Audi R8 with ease. I feel unsettled, even with Emmett singing loudly and off-key in the front seat, as I try to assimilate this new version of Rosalie. She swings the car off the highway into a rest stop, and the three of us slip swiftly into the woods.

I realize how long I've disobeyed my thirst after felling three white-tailed deer in quick succession. Emmett grins widely, and offers me a high five. Rosalie gives him a withering smile and takes off into the night.

We hunt for hours. Eventually I sink to the soft ground and lean back against rocky outcrop. Emmett has run on ahead a mile or so, chasing one last black bear. Rosalie emerges from the trees to my right, wiping her hands on the backs of her jeans, and sinks to the dark soil alongside me. I've never seen her like this, her face flushed from the hunt, hair wild. There is a smear of dried blood across one high cheekbone, and a filthy streak of mud across the arm of her sweater. She looks a mess. She looks...almost human.

"Feel better?"

I nod as I try and tug my own errant mane back into some semblance of a ponytail. I feel sated, comfortable. "Are you sure about this? About me staying with you guys for a while? I can always go back to Chicago."

Rosalie re-laces her boot, plucking at at a clutch of tiny leaves that seem to have attached themselves to her sock.

"The others have had plenty of time to get to know you, Bella," she says, with a small smile. "It's our turn now."

Relief and gratitude flood over me. I realize that I _want_ to stay. I want to get to know my fierce, complex older sister.

"Besides. Every girl has to live in New York City at some point in her life, and you've _definitely_ been doing it wrong." She gets to her feet and tugs me up to join her. "C'mon. Let's go find that idiot husband of mine and go home."


	11. Each road that I walk down

So I start my New York life over.

Rosalie is working as a junior at a PR agency and gets me a job answering the phones. It's tedious, and I spend most of the day reading novels tucked out of sight under my desk, but it's sort of wonderful. To be around people, and not want to bite them or fuck them, there's something redemptive about it. I begin to understand why the Cullens can put up with high school over and over if it means they get to be in one place for a while. I like the stability, the routine of it all.

On the weekends, I watch baseball with Emmett. For reasons passing understanding, he's obsessed with the Cubs. "It's really something, Bella. They haven't won a championship since my change. I figure I'm their longest-standing fan by decades. They have to win _eventually_."  
I laugh in disbelief. "I'm serious, Bella," he gives me a wounded look. "You have _no_ idea how much money I have lost to Jasper over the years because of this team. They _owe_ me a win."

Rosalie shows me the city. Her favorite place is the Met, and she likes to go at night, when the tourists have thinned out a bit. She adores the Egyptian Wing, sitting in the shadow of the Temple of Dendur. "This is one of the only places where I feel young," she says simply. "The passage of time seems slower here." We walk across the Park to the Hayden Planetarium. Rose trails her pale fingers along the handrail of the Cosmic Pathway. "See, Bella? Thirteen billion years. Even we are nothing in the face of so much history."

On Saturday we lunch at Barneys, and she spends an hour with me at the cosmetics counters, glaring at overeager sales staff until they shuffle uncomfortably away and she can take her time showing me what I need. Stronger foundation, concealer for the shadows under my eyes.

"Can I ask you something?" she says, tilting her head to one side and examining her handiwork. "Why did you leave the others? Were you unhappy? Is that why you were on this self-destructive streak?"

I rub idly at the smears of makeup she has applied to the back of my hand. None of the reasons sound very good in my head anymore.

"I thought...I was making things difficult. By being around. I thought it might all go back to normal if I wasn't there."

Rosalie's forehead creases almost imperceptibly, and then she goes back to dusting powder all over my face with a huge, soft brush. "There!" She brandishes a hand mirror in front of me. The artificial color helps a great deal, particularly here in the bright faux-clinical environment of the cosmetics department. I look...healthy. Happy.

When summer settles over the city, Rose and I give up our jobs, the pretense too hard to maintain with so many sunny days. In the evenings, the three of us lie around in the Park listening to concerts. Tonight it's the Philharmonic. Emmett is flat on his back, taking up most of the dark red picnic rug. He lazily tosses a baseball so that it loops easily over a tree branch above him before falling back to his mitt. Rosalie and I sit barefoot, wriggling our toes in the dry grass, the earth below still warm from the heat of the day.

The music is intoxicating. A Chinese soprano is singing an aria from _Roméo et Juliette_, and her voice dances in the humid air.

"Do you think...if I practiced every day for, like, a century, I would sound like that?"

Emmett bounces his baseball off the back of my head.

"Not a chance, little B. I've heard you in the shower."

Rosalie and I both giggle and she swats at him with the paperback she's reading.

It makes me wonder, though. Was Edward always a beautiful piano player, or did he just have all the time in the world to become one? What do I want to become, now_ I_ have all the time in the world?

Emmett charters a yacht from the Manhattan Sailing Club, and some nights as the sun sinks over the city, we head out on the water. Rosalie and I take turns diving off the front of the boat, slicing gracefully through the refreshing waves. Emmett challenges me to races, my newborn energy a relatively even match for his imposing brawn.

In the fall, I start classes at Columbia. Jasper arranges beautifully forged transcripts and student records, and I'm sure there is a large donation from Carlisle somewhere in the background. But I find I love being back at school, hungry for my classes in English literature, philosophy and art history. The old buildings remind me of what Rosalie said, that there are still some things older than us. I read the masters in my freshman courses, because _Wuthering Heights_ is something I don't even want to recall anymore. I meet Rose for lunch most days. We don't eat, of course, but the companionship is worth the charade. She volunteers at the Bank Street preschool right down Broadway, and the stories she tells me about working with the children make her whole face light up.

The rest of the family come to us for Christmas. Alice pouts outrageously when we won't let her decorate. "It's a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, Bella!" she wails at the lush six-foot spruce we have installed in the lounge. I pat her on the head and try not to take offense. It is just so lovely to have everyone in one place. Almost everyone.

The difference from last Christmas is absolutely palpable. The apartment is filled with music and conversation. The only unrest comes when Alice accidentally tells Emmett, who has slowly plowed his way through five Harry Potter books and is almost done with the sixth, that Dumbledore dies. He chases her furiously down one side of Manhattan and up the other, as she nimbly predicts and evades him, an unseen blur dodging pedestrians and traffic and squealing rapid-fire apologies over her shoulder.

As happy as I am, I begin to understand what it must have been like for Edward being the seventh wheel in a house with these couples. There is a loneliness that unfolds, late at night, after they retire to their rooms. An empty space that stretches out from my heart to fill every part of me.

The first week back at school in the new year, Rose is in a strange mood. She begs off meeting for lunch, and disappears in the evenings, returning late and heading straight to the shower before joining us. I watch Emmett closely for any sign that he's noticed her absences, but he just seems glad when she comes home, dragging her lithe form into his lap and kissing the top of her head.

I'm in the East-Asian library studying for an exam when Rose sends a text message insisting that we meet later that night for drinks at an address I don't recognize. Em and I watch the Redskins lose yet another football game first, so I'm late to meet her at the restaurant, and I'm distracted. I smile too broadly at the host who just about swoons and suddenly can't tell me where my table is, so I lean over a rail at the entrance to look down on the seating area below. Rose's blond hair is instantly recognizable as she stands at the bar. She is leaning into the man standing next to her and whispering savagely into his ear. Suddenly, with one breath I am staggering back against the wall, desperately scrabbling to catch my balance.

Edward is here. Edward is here in this bar.

"You _ridiculous_, selfish, egotistical..." Rose's voice is dripping acid, her list tailing off into an inventive stream of curses that even make me wince. "She's been through _hell _and out the other side. We all have. And for _what_? You can't get your head out of your ass long enough to see that you had a chance here and you blew it."

Edward is ignoring her, but I can tell by the way he leans more heavily on his forearms that he is listening. I am looking at them both in profile, and his dark jacket is rumpled, white french cuffs poking out at the wrists. There is an untouched tumbler of scotch in front of him, and he shuffles it slowly back and forth from hand to hand. The weight on his shoulders seems to be increasing by the second as he slumps forward a little at her every word, his hair falling in his eyes.

"She didn't want it to happen this way! None of us did! But she would have _chosen _it. She would have chosen _you_."

"Fuck off."

His voice sounds sharp, cut glass, razor blades. He sounds every one of his hundred and nine years. "I don't want to see her. I don't want to know what she's been through. I don't know how to make this any clearer to you, Rose. If you want to keep tracking me down all the time like this, I can't stop you. But don't think for a second I want to hear a fucking thing about Bella."

I am two states away before I stop running.


	12. Reminds me of you

I find myself on the outskirts of Hollis, New Hampshire. Population: 7,012. It's postcard perfect, with gleaming red barns, a town common, and banners advertising 'Old Home Day'. I feel like I've been swallowed whole by a real life Stars Hollow.

It's shortly before dawn, and I look down at myself to take inventory. I am still wearing the black pants and yellow silk blouse I had on for drinks with Rosalie, but they are dirty and torn in places from my cross-country efforts. The high heels were abandoned miles ago. I still have my wallet. I have my phone.

I do the only thing I can think of. I call Alice. Naturally, she's expecting me.

She directs me to a Walmart in the nearby town of Hudson, and I'm there when it opens to buy a pile of nondescript warm clothes and shoes. The store clerk is a bored, gum-chewing teenager who is too interested in her iPod to pay my urchin appearance any real attention. I change in the bathroom before I leave the store, extracting twigs from my hair and splashing water on my face.

When I call Alice back from the center of town, she tells me that Hollis has a public library with gleaming white columns and an American flag fluttering out front. The Hollis Public Library needs a new children's librarian, and it seems like Isobel Whitlock will be perfect for the job.

"I'm emailing you your c.v." she says. "I've been a little creative, but you'll do fine Bella. You love books, it's perfect. There's a real estate agent just off Monument Square, and..."

She's exhausting, like a little tornado of organization in my ear.

"What do I tell people?" I interrupt her, my voice is no more than a whisper.

"I've thought about that. You don't want anyone to ask too many questions, so try and say as little as possible, but based on what I've seen you should hint at a bad break-up. Something that suggests domestic violence..."

The phone slips from my hands, and I'm leaning against the side of a bakery overcome with choking sobs.

"Excuse me, miss? Are you okay?"

A kindly-looking older gentleman is leaning over me. He has a set of keys jangling in one hand and a newspaper tucked under his arm. He takes off the flat cap he is wearing, and offers me a hand, which I take reverently and carefully get to my feet.

"I'm...I'm so sorry..." I whisper, stooping to pick up my cell, and clicking it to silent as I stuff it back into the pocket of my jeans. Alice will have to wait.

"Bad news?" he asks me, studying my features with concern. He has a kind face and thinning grey hair. "If you don't mind me saying, you look awful pale, and your hands are freezing."

"No...I just..." I stutter helplessly. This is what Carlisle was talking about, all those months ago. To be a vampire means many things, but one of them is to be an effortless liar.

He reaches around me and unlocks the door to the bakery, pushing the door open.

"Well, why don't you come inside for a coffee. I'm Gerald."

"Isobel," I manage, nodding gratefully. "Thank you, that would be great."

I sit at the counter with my hands wrapped around a hot mug of tea, trying to compose myself, while Gerald potters around getting ready to open for the day. I tell him that I've just arrived in town, that things went badly with my fiancée and that I don't really want to talk about it. He gives me a muffin, on the house, and the address to a bed & breakfast.

"Why'd you pick Hollis?" he asks, as I'm gathering my things. "Seems like a pretty small place for a girl like you."

I smile at him sadly, tucking the muffin in one of my Walmart bags to dispose of later. "I guess this is just where I stopped running."

The bed & breakfast is gorgeous. A former working farm, the original barn has been fully restored, and the owner shows me to a divine little cottage nestled under the branches of a giant oak.

"No luggage?" he asks, staring at my shopping bags in confusion.

"I'm...getting things sent on," I manage shakily, cursing myself internally for having turned up here at breakfast time, on foot and with nothing but the clothes on my back. Careless.

I take a long shower, with the temperature turned as high as it can go, scrubbing viciously at the grass stains on the soles of my feet. Not for the first time, I long for tears.

And so I dress for my job interview, concentrating on the tricks Rose taught me about my hair and makeup, donning a pair of glasses to hopefully add to the illusion of a couple of extra years.  
Mrs Ainsley, the head librarian, is a dumpy, slightly sour woman who doesn't really agree with the idea of children in libraries. I assure her that I am all in favor of keeping children in their designated area, and she assures me that my budget is limited and doesn't stretch to 'fairy costumes'. I have no idea what she's talking about. I retell stories of Rosalie's from the preschool in New York, speak passionately about the "classics", and shrug sympathetically when she starts in the evils of the internet. She says I can have a trial period.

I spend the next two days with the real estate agent, and fall in love with an antique reproduction home with a gambrel roof. Carlisle signs and FedExes the papers straight away. It has hardwood floors and a fireplace, and I email photos to Esme who swoons over the phone.

"It is _gorgeous_. When can we visit?"

I hedge a little. It's only been days, and I am still feeling grazed, livid at Rose, confused as all hell. I've just been putting one foot in front of the other. Getting the job, finding somewhere to live, and succeeding in looking a little broken every time I meet someone new. Gerald has done a wonderful job, clearly telling everyone in town that he found me doubled over and sobbing. I am tragic figure, pitiable, mysterious. No one tries too hard to pry.

I can't tell Esme that her son has broken my heart all over again.

"I just need to be here on my own for a bit."

She sounds disappointed, as she murmurs her assent. "You tell us, anything you need. We're there."

"You've done more than enough buying this place."

It was hard to ask, but Carlisle offered before I could even get the words out. "Esme loves New England," he assured me. "Even when you don't need it any more, we'll get plenty of use out of it."

The children's space at the library is kind of dull. So budget or no, I spend my first few days making construction paper posters, and setting up brightly colored displays of books. Mrs Ainsley eyes my progress warily, but says nothing.

At night, I potter around my new house making lists of things I'd like to get Em to fix, furniture I need to buy, walls that could do with painting. I hunt regularly too, determined not to repeat the mistakes I made last time I was on my own. Deer mostly, which are easy if not particularly tasty after Emmett's bears.

Rosalie finally calls at the end of my second week.

"Look, I don't really know what to say."

"Let me get you started, then," my voice unexpectedly sarcastic, bitchy. "How often have you seen him over the last two years?"

"Four times," she sighs. I am staggered.

"Then why the fuck did you lie about it?"

"What the hell was I supposed to say, Bella? The first time we found him was in Lima. You were about three months old, and by all accounts, barely able to feed yourself. He was being a royal douchebag, hell-bent on destroying Victoria and refusing to listen to reason."

I suck in a breath. I haven't heard her name mentioned since before my death.

"He chased her. That's why he went to South America, he was trying to track her."

"_Why?_"

"James said something to him at the ballet studio. Something about her avenging the death of her mate, that she would come for you."

I shudder violently. The very thought of Victoria coming anywhere near me is appalling, but if she went to Forks... "Charlie!" I gasp.

"Don't worry. Edward found her. She didn't get to avenge anything."

I feel a little sick. The idea of Edward like some stalking vigilante, roaming across South America. A picture of Alice returns unbidden from memory, her tiny hands wrenching James' head from his shoulders. Did Edward do that? Tear Victoria limb from limb?

"So we found him in Lima, and then we lost him again. He's a slippery little sucker when he's in a foul mood, which let's face it, is now _all _of the time."

"Then what?" My head is pounding. None of this makes sense. Rosalie has known where he was, all along.

"Then he was in Ireland. He visited some...friends...of Carlisle's."

"Carlisle knew? And he didn't tell me?"

"Honey, we _all _knew and didn't tell you. So you can hate all of us equally, or you can just hate me if it's more satisfying, because I was the one stupid enough to keep tracking him down. The rest of the family thought I was crazy. Even Em, though he wasn't brave enough to say it to my face."

All of the air leaves my lungs in a puff. Beautiful, determined Rosalie, chasing her brother around the world with singular purpose.

"So I found him in Dublin, and he was still being a total fucking lunatic. He was starving himself, despite Maggie's best efforts. All he did was play the piano at home every fucking day, and in a bar every fucking night."

Maggie? Who is _Maggie_?

"So I left him there. But by the time I got back to the States, Alice was a basket case. You'd gone to New York by this point, and she was distraught about that, but worse still she'd seen Edward going to Volterra."

And the hits keep right on coming. My knees are weak. I sink to the sofa. The phone burns hot against my ear.

"So Em and I jumped a flight straight away. To be honest, Bella, I didn't really think I could stop him. We jacked a car from the airport and I've never driven so fast, but we were too late. He'd already dragged his sorry ass in front of Aro and asked to die."

My breath hitches unevenly.

"Aro said no. I'm not clear on the details, but I think maybe he's also a selfish asshole and wanted Edward to stay and work for him. Aro didn't really understand the whole martyred emo teen thing Edward had going on. Alice had seen Edward doing something really stupid, forcing the Guard's hand, but by the time we got there he'd changed his mind. He was just a broken shell. We got him back to Rome where we have a place."

"You left him there?" My voice sounds tiny.

"Well, he wasn't suicidal anymore, Alice was sure of that. And frankly, he was just unbearable to be around. He was an utterly self-absorbed, wallowing mess. Eventually even Emmett tired of him."

I think back to my time in Chicago. Rose & Em's Christmas call from Dublin. They were all so careful to keep it from me.

"And the fourth time was just now in New York, and I don't have a fucking clue what he was doing in the city, but I discovered he was there a few days before, and he hung out in that bar all the time, so I arranged to meet you there for drinks."

"What the fuck?"

"I know. It was stupid. But I'd talked myself hoarse and I wasn't getting anywhere so I thought if I just put you two in the same damn room for five minutes then it might all come to a head. But he could smell you on me, and he reacted really badly, and then you ran, and then he ran.

Anyway, I'm done now. I'm finished meddling. I thought I could do something that would make it okay, but I can't...I don't know, Bella...I can't fix it. So I'm going to stop. Alice hasn't told us where you are, I'm not going to ask. You take whatever time you need."

I hang up without saying goodbye, and then I call Mrs Ainsley and claim one of the kids at the library has given me a cold.

I bring down three deer before my mind stops whirling uncontrollably. My family have been hiding this from me to protect me, I know that. But now I also know without a shadow of a doubt that Edward wants nothing more to do with me. That at one point, he would rather have died than be near me. Any hope that I carried has flickered and died.

This is my life now, here in Hollis, with my construction paper posters, and story time on Wednesdays. The coffee I ask Gerald for in a takeaway cup with a lid, so that no one can tell I don't drink it, and the muffin he thinks is for me, but I leave for Mrs Ainsley's morning tea in the staff room. Enigmatic, tragic Isobel Whitlock will do for the next few years, until time forces me to move on.


	13. This whole town is haunted

Casey Lincoln is sixteen and boy crazy. She volunteers in the library after school three days a week, saying her mother thinks it will look good on her college transcripts but that it actually gives her a chance to hang out with her boyfriend Matt who works at the gas station on the way home.

"I tell her that I finish here at six," she shrugs. "It means we get some _alone _time." She waggles her eyebrows at me in a way that makes me think of Jessica Stanley. I wonder what she's up to now, and if Mike took her to prom after I died.

Casey is the one who files the Seventeen magazines in the Young Adult section and points out the young starlets to me on their pages. "See he is totally dating his co-star," she says authoritatively, pointing at a grainy paparazzi photo where a young couple looks completely unrecognizable. "But they don't want anyone to know. It's an _epic_ love." she sighs.

I try to cover my disbelieving snort with a cough.

"You don't believe in epic love, Isobel," she says to me, "but that's only because you haven't met _the one_."

This time I don't even bother hiding my eye-roll.

But Casey suddenly looks up from what she's doing with a start, and mumbles a little bit, and then apologizes. "I'm sorry, I know... you... I mean. Not everyone is a good guy." She wanders around to the other side of the shelving and starts rearranging books for no reason.

Oh, that's right. Poor Isobel, suffering at the hands of her evil ex-fiancée. Some days even I don't know who I'm supposed to be anymore.

"Anyway," she continues, ultimately undeterred, "I've found the perfect guy for you. I would totally take a run at him myself, but you know there's Matt, who I am _totally_ in love with, and also he's super-old. Your dude, I mean, not Matt."

I am about to interrupt to assure Casey that I am only one year older than she is, but my phone vibrates and it's Alice, and I've learned the hard way about not taking her 911 calls.

"I would have told you sooner," Alice says in a rush, "but I genuinely _did not know_ until right this second, and neither did any of the rest of the family. I _promise_!"

Casey hasn't noticed that I've answered the call, and is still prattling to me from behind the shelving. "He's a doctor, Isobel, so you should totally hit that. I saw him at the clinic on Friday, which is also completely not for the reason you're thinking, by the way..."

"Bella? I mean it! I am not lying to you. Are you there...?" Alice's voice starts to sound very far away.

"...because Mr Troy, who is my asshat gym teacher. You know, the one I told you about? Well, he was convinced it was sprained..."

"Bella? Sweetie, answer me. I need to explain..."

"...and there he was! Smoking hot Dr. Masen, all with the brooding eyes and the floppy hair..."

The two voices begin to press in on my skull sharply from opposite directions. I close my eyes.

"Bella! Tell me you can hear me. Have you seen him? Is that why you're freaking out right now?"

"...and he doesn't actually look, like, super old. He's not like Gerald-old. But he's a doctor, so he's definitely not my age. So he'd be perfect for you. Plus he's all smooth, with the dazzling eyes and the '_Call me, Edward_' which, dude, may have been a sexy name like, a hundred years ago but...

"Bella!"

"Isobel? Oh my God, Isobel? MRS AINSLEY! ISOBEL TOTALLY FAINTED."

The ground does seem to have rushed up to meet me, though I'm pretty sure I can't actually faint.

Mrs Ainsley is leaning over me, and Casey has a phone pressed to her ear and they both seem to be talking very loudly and very fast, but they still sound a long way off. The thunderous noise in my head is drowning them out.

"The doctor's coming, Isobel," Mrs Ainsley says in a way that is supposed to be soothing, but instantly causes realization to hit me like a slap. I start to struggle up to a sitting position, protesting loudly that, of all people, a doctor is not required.

But of course it's too late. He's already striding through the library, like some sort of hero off the cover of one of Casey's favorite romance novels. Dark denim jeans and an impeccably tailored pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms. Like me, he's adopted spectacles, though they don't seem to age him at all, and behind them his eyes are a deep, impenetrable gold.

"Dude. That was really _fast_," Casey mutters, slightly awed.

"I was nearby," Edward says, dismissively. He's crouching over me in an instant, his hands are in my hair, his fingers lightly probing at my scalp. I forget to hold my breath, my lungs are flooded with his scent. It's all too much, _too much_. He smells like a rainstorm, like fresh blood after a kill, like _home_.

"Did you hit your head when you fell, Miss Whitlock?" he asks me, his voice rough, his expression unreadable.

He holds up a finger, indicating I should follow it, but I can't break eye contact with him, even for the sake of this stupid facade. He's here, after two years, and his hands are on me lighting up trails across my skin and I don't know what he expects me to say.

"When did you last drink something?" he says, an eyebrow arching. I try to think, but he's confusing me. To talk, I have to breathe. If I breathe again, I think I might be done.

He sighs in frustration, and gets to his feet. The absence of his touch is like salt in a fresh wound.

"I think Miss Whitlock is just dehydrated," he says reassuringly to Mrs Ainsley, giving her a thousand-watt smile that makes her blush to the roots of her white hair. Casey gives me a thumbs-up behind his back, winking outrageously. "But I'll drive her home and stay with her for a little bit to make sure."

I am still mute, waiting for my synapses to start firing the way they are supposed to. I feel betrayed by this stupid immortal body, still utterly overwhelmed by the infuriating Edward Cullen. 

Masen. Whatever.

Edward leans down and scoops an arm underneath me, lifting me easily to my feet. Casey hands me my bag, the traitor, and there is really nothing left to do but let Edward lead me from the library and deposit me in a dark green Mercedes he has parked out front.

Edward pulls out from the curb slowly, giving Mrs Ainsley a small wave. She clutches a hand to her chest, still blushing like a schoolgirl. Once he is around the corner and out of sight, he drives the way Edward always has: effortlessly, and like a maniac.

In minutes we pull up in my driveway. I don't ask how he knows where I live.

We sit there in the car, an uncomfortable silence filling all the space around us, suffocating me, pressing in on us both.

"Will you invite me in?" he asks finally, sounding suddenly unsure.

"When have you ever waited for an invitation?" My voice is bleak. There is a certain inevitability about all of this.

He follows me into the house, and I wish idly for human distractions. That I could be making a pot of tea right now, or a sandwich. Smoking a cigarette. Something to do with my hands, to break this interminable, awkward silence.

We stand in my kitchen, with its gorgeous bay windows overlooking the stand of trees in the backyard that stretch through to Silver Lake.

"It's a little like Forks," he says finally, "Though I guess it doesn't rain as much."

I hiss in frustration.

"Small talk, Edward? Really? You want to talk about the weather? You want to reminisce about _Forks?_" My voice is hard, angular. He's had me off balance since Casey started talking about him, and suddenly I feel like I'm finally finding my feet again. "What are you _doing _here?"

"Alice tried pretty hard," he said, running a hand through his hair, his expression almost embarrassed. "Polish sung poetry. God knows where she picked that up."

My face contorts into a scowl.

"It wasn't her fault. Jasper...distracted her...one evening and I saw a picture of this house. That was all. I've spent the better part of three months criss-crossing New England."

"None of that answers my question," I respond flatly.

He leans back against the kitchen counter. Late afternoon sun breaks through the cloud cover, causing dancing light to ripple across his face. He looks impossibly beautiful, his strong features softened in a combination of confusion and regret.

"Why did you take Jasper's name?"

I'm thrown by his rapid segue, and it must show on my face. He waves at the direction of my locket. "I mean, you're wearing my father's crest, but you're calling yourself a Whitlock."

There's something brittle in his tone. If I didn't know better, I would think he was jealous.

"What are you doing here, Edward?"

He sighs in frustration. Clearly my mind is no more open to him now than it was when I was alive.

"Rosalie said something in New York. She said...that you would have _chosen_ this."

I shrug noncommittally.

He tilts his head slightly in bewilderment. "Is she wrong?"

"No. You know I would have. I told you enough times."

He huffs in exasperation. "But that was...I mean you didn't have any idea. You were just a..."

"Just a _what_, Edward?"

"You didn't know what you were saying," he finishes weakly.

Suddenly it is like some sort of dam breaks and I can't stop the flow of words as they leave my mouth. "When you left me, you broke _everything_ inside of me. Every bone in my body. You tore every tendon. I would have cried rivers of tears, but you made it so that I couldn't. I would have cut myself, but because of you it had no effect. You chained me in this prison, and you walked away. How _dare _you presume to come here, into my _home_, and tell me what I thought and what I felt!"

Edward's face is a mask of anguish.

"I am only standing here because of _our _family. Without them I would have found a way to die. But they held me together, they mended the pieces. "

Edward slams a fist down onto the granite counter. It cracks satisfyingly beneath his hand.

"You don't understand," he seethes.

"I understand that you're a coward!" I spit back. "I understand that you told me you always wanted to be with me, and that in the end that meant nothing."

"You meant _everything_, Bella. And you _died_. And it was _my fault_."

He is shouting. There is a glint in his eyes, a hard edge that I have never seen before, and it ignites something in me, something long dormant.

"And they expected me to spend _every day_ watching you wrestle with being a newborn, watching you fight the demon inside of us. Realistically, the probability of watching you take human lives and then try to live with the torment and the regret. And all the while knowing that it was _all_ because of _me._"

He is advancing toward me, backing me against my side of the counter, one hand rifling through his hair with anger and frustration.

"I was supposed to fake your _death_. I was supposed to tell your father_. I was supposed to attend your damned funeral._ And all the while I was supposed to forget about every human opportunity that I had cost you."

I am pressed against the counter now, and he has a hand on either side of me, pinning me in place. His eyes are blazing, his chest heaving. I can feel his breath on my face, feel the devastation, the infinite sorrow in his twisted features. The craving for understanding, for a forgiveness I cannot offer.

I place one palm flat on his chest, feeling the muscle contract beneath my fingertips. He holds his breath.

"You were supposed to be with me," I whisper, as I push him gently back, and turn away. "Get out of my house."


	14. There'll never be anything new

As Edward's car roars ferociously out of the drive, I collapse to the floor, my back against the kitchen cabinet. My lungs won't fill properly with air, and the only sound in the house is my ragged, uncontrollable breathing.

I feel numb. I feel like the ground is shifting beneath me.

In retrospect, it seems obvious. Of _course_ Edward blames himself.

It should make a difference. It should matter that he didn't leave because he hated me, or because he didn't want to be with me when I was no longer human. It should feel like something: an explanation; a _release_. But it doesn't. Now all I have is the fresh pain of seeing him, his face more flawless, more incomprehensible than I had ever understood when I was alive. How foolish I had been, to hope for a future with such a creature, to try and clutch at the divine.

I have no idea how much time passes, sitting frozen on the floor with the linoleum gluing itself to my palms. I'm eventually broken out of my stupor by the jarring ring of my cellphone. Trying to decline Alice's call, I dig it from my pocket and I'm surprised to see that it's Carlisle.

"Alice told us what happened."

I say nothing. What is there to say? Your son is a fucking moron? You're all idiots for trying to keep it from me?

He sighs.

"Bella, I'm so sorry. We've all tried to reason with Rosalie at various times, tried to get her to leave this alone."

"I thought he didn't _want_ me, Carlisle. I thought that's why he left."

"We were only trying to protect you. Edward...was not in a good place."

"And now?"

Carlisle is quiet for what seems like an age. I think briefly about disconnecting the call.

"I haven't seen or heard from my son in a long time, Bella. I don't know what he's thinking now. But you...if you need anything. _Anything_. You let us know, and we'll be there."

"Don't call. Any of you." My voice sounds strangled, foreign. "I need...God, Carlisle, I just need some space." I hang up before he can say anything else.

The clock on the phone makes me realize it will be dawn soon. I've been sitting here all night. I get up and stretch my limbs. I need to hunt. I need to clear my head.

I leave all the windows open to try and clear Edward's scent from my house.

When I arrive at work a few hours later, Mrs Ainsley clucks around me in concern. It's the most empathy she has shown since I arrived in Hollis, and I know it has everything to do with Edward.

"I'm absolutely fine. Dr Masen was right, it was just dehydration." I pluck a water bottle out of my handbag and wave it at her. "I promise I won't let it happen again."

I try to busy myself, unpacking and cataloging new acquisitions, covering books with clear plastic and adhering colored stickers to the spines. But the work is methodical, straightforward. Not nearly distracting enough.

I use a box cutter to slice open the last carton of deliveries addressed to me and stop short. This isn't copies of 'Llama Llama Mad at Mama'. It's filled with leather-bound journals, and some of them look very, very old. I pull one out of the packing peanuts, and open it. The date on the page is 1952, and I would recognise Edward's flowing script anywhere. I snap the book closed with a start, and there is a crunching noise as I realize I'm gripping the workbench too hard. I slide the journal back into the box and slam the flaps shut, taping it closed with unnecessary force. Scribbling my name and address out with a Sharpie, I scrawl "EDWARD MASEN, c/- SOUTHERN NH MEDICAL CENTER, NASHUA NH" in tight, angry letters. I toss the box in the outgoing mail tray, where it lands with a heavy thud.

I don't want to read his fanciful tales of self-loathing. He owes me more than that.

Over the next few days I slip into a mindnumbing routine, trying not to think at all about Edward or what he said, or where he went. I hunt at night, ranging further and further afield. I order everything on my Amazon wishlist at once, and read until morning. On warm days I get to Gerald's bakery before the sun comes up, and let myself into the library just as dawn peels over the horizon. In the low orange light of late evening, it's easier to keep in the shadows on the way home.

Days pass, or weeks, I am not sure. It's a Monday morning, and I am sorting the mail into piles for Mrs Ainsley to consider. In the middle of the stack is a small padded envelope addressed to me with a typewritten label. I pull the tab, and the contents fall out on the desk, wrapped in tissue. There is no note or card. Inside is a pendant, made of cool, hard stone, hung on a leather cord. Carved into the stone is a primitive depiction of what looks like a bird. The design feels familiar but I don't know why. I smooth my thumb over the stone surface, and turn it in my palm, but there is no indication of where it was made.

That night I search Google relentlessly for several hours, using all kinds of crazy combinations of terms. I look at pictures of cave paintings and totem poles and hieroglyphs. Finally I find it. This is one of the Nazca lines in Peru: the Hummingbird.

I rub at the polished stone, twisting the cord around my fingers, but it remains indecipherable. I leave it on my bedside table, and in the morning when I dress each day, I tuck it into my pocket and try not to think too hard about why.

The next week I'm thankfully distracted by Mr Bell's fourth grade class, who come in each afternoon to learn about research. The children's questions are exactly what I need, and I get them busy with Wikipedia, dictionaries, and old-fashioned copies of Britannica. I begin to notice one pale little boy with ginger hair and freckles who likes to tuck himself away behind some shelves, his nose in a book.

"Hello."

He looks up, startled by my silent approach.

"I'm Isobel."

His eyes are wide. I wonder if I wasn't careful enough with my makeup this morning, if I look a little too predatory.

"I'm Scott," he manages, finally.

"Do you need some help with your topic?" I aim for sounding kindly, crouching down to his level but keeping a reasonable distance. He looks jittery, but he shakes his head. "I've done my research," he says defensively, pushing some notepaper toward me.

"Your topic is baseball?" I grin. "I love baseball. My older brother taught me all about it."

"Me, too," he smiles shyly.

"My brother likes the Cubs, but they _never_ win."

"We never win either, but we have a new coach, and he's really good. He gave me this book to read, and it's awesome." He shows me the cover, and I'm impressed. It's a paperback copy of Sluggers, perfect for a baseball-mad nine year old. The new coach must be a dad. "He said there are more in the series, and I should ask Isobel at the library for them. So I guess that's you."

My throat constricts a little, and I swallow hard.

"Who's your new coach, Scott?"

I know the answer already, of course.

"The new doctor. Dr Masen. He's _really_ good at baseball."

Yes, he is. And he's also clearly not leaving town.

I show Scott where to find the books and go back to my desk. I have an email from Alice that I delete without reading.

Scott starts to spend the afternoons when he doesn't have little league in the library. He's an avid reader, and after finishing off the Sluggers series I get him started on the Baseball Card Adventures. Just before closing time he carefully packs his books away in his backpack, and sits at the counter opposite me to wait for his dad.

"It's getting warmer now. Don't you want to spend some time outside after school?"

He swings his legs, tapping one of his hands on the counter and picking at the strap on his bag. "Dad likes me to wait here. That way he knows I'm safe."

Scott's father hurries in to the library just as the clock ticks to six.

"I'm sorry I'm late! I know you're not a babysitting service, I promise."

I smile at his rumpled appearance. His shirt is untucked, glasses slightly askew, and his curly sandy-colored hair is all over the place. According to Scott, his dad is a science teacher at the high school, and he certainly has a young, mad professor vibe about him. He's clutching a pile of books to his chest which threaten to slip and escape at any moment, and his brown leather satchel has seen better days.

"That's quite all right," I assure him, stacking the last of the books I was checking, and turning to log off my computer. Mrs Ainsley headed home early with a headache, and I wonder if she's angling for a reason to go to the doctor. She's been out of sorts all week.

"I'm Julian Taylor."

I turn back to find him still standing there, offering his hand for me to shake. I take it reluctantly. "Isobel Whitlock, I'm the ..."

"Children's librarian, I know. Scott talks about you non-stop. Your hands are freezing!"

I yank my arm back quickly and stuff my hands awkwardly in the pockets of my jacket. My knuckle knocks against the pendant, and I automatically take it into my fist.

"Sorry, God! That was rude," he stutters. Scott has slid down off his chair and is tugging at his father's shirt. "Yes, right. Um. Look, this is really forward and whatever, but I'm taking Scott across the street for dinner, and well, he'd really like it if you joined us..."

I blink in surprise. My stomach pitches and I hesitate a little too long.

"No, of course," he bumbles on, his face flushing in embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. We'll...ah...we'll get out of your way..." He turns quickly to hustle Scott out of the library and instantly loses his perilous grip on the stack of texts. They crash to the counter and the floor and he groans.

"Here, let me help." I gather the books on the counter closest to me. Julian's heart is racing and he is blushing fiercely, and I have to hold my breath for a moment to get myself under control. I let it out slowly to speak. "I'm on a crazy diet at the moment," I manage with what I hope is a self-deprecating smile, "so I can't come for dinner." Julian is nodding, clearly desperate to escape the situation with a shred of dignity intact. I run my thumb over the carved surface of the pendant in my pocket. His scent is too close, too warm, too _human_. But at the same time he seems sweet, and genuine. Uncomplicated. "But, you know...another time might be nice?"

He breaks into a wide grin and nods. "I'll take you up on that."

As he leaves I turn back to finish logging off the computer. There are two more emails from Alice, but I delete them both.


	15. Everybody's got a hunger

**This chapter's especially for dawntwilight000 and aliceg1967 for reccing me at ADifferentForest, and for all the lovely reviewers. Thank you. There's more to come, and soon!**

x-X-x-X-x

Julian's embarrassment seems to wear off pretty quickly, and he becomes a regular visitor in the evenings to collect Scott, no longer content to wait outside in his car. Mrs Ainsley definitely does not approve, but her sour looks go entirely unheeded by both of us.

At first he just asks after my day and how Scott's reading is coming along, but I find him easy to talk to, and so he starts to come a little earlier and linger a little longer. Scott even gets to the point where he doesn't pack all his books away before his dad arrives, so that he can tuck himself up in a chair by the door and keep reading while Julian chats to me.

"You must think I'm a terrible father, leaving him here every afternoon, but I've tried after-school care. I've tried my parents. I even scraped enough together for a nanny for while. This is what he loves best, being here with the books."

I think about my own childhood books, crammed into overflowing shelves in my room in Chicago. My human memory may be getting fuzzier every day, but I still know what it's like to want to escape into fantasy.

"Scott likes it," I reply with a shrug. "I don't think it's doing him any harm. He's just expanding his world in his own way."

I find Julian charming and humble, with a quirky sense of humor. I also find him a paralyzing exercise in self-restraint. He tends to lean across the counter as he talks to me, and so I'm grateful for the physical barrier. Since I arrived in Hollis, people have largely treated me with kid gloves. They keep their distance, literally and figuratively, which has suited me and my young thirst just fine. But Julian's wife died of cancer three years ago, so he's used to being the town object of pity as well. He doesn't seem to observe the same social boundaries, and as a result, every evening my throat bursts into flames.

I hunt more regularly, and further afield, so I can take down larger kills. It makes me feel sloshy, gluttonous, and it only barely helps. Every time he leans across the counter and invades my personal space even a little, the inferno ignites again.

I know I should draw back, discourage him. Take myself out of the situation before something dreadful happens. But I enjoy his company too much. He makes me feel normal, almost human. The trade off seems worth it.

There's a dark thought that wells up within me, though, every time Julian tries to close the distance between us.

_How did Edward do it?_

How did he lie with me, night after night? How did he hold me, kiss me? God, the very idea of it is inconceivable. Impossible. Like arguing with gravity.

Two weeks go by before I find another package addressed to me in the mail. This one is larger, about the size of a coffee table book. When I open it, out slides a picture frame made of dark wood. The image is a page from an old manuscript, medieval or earlier, and I fervently hope it's a reproduction. It has beautiful, rich colors, and intricate detailed penmanship. The margins are stunningly decorated with Celtic knotwork and a stylized figure of a swan.

Mrs Ainsley recognizes it immediately. "That's from the Book of Kells," she says, leaning over my shoulder to get a better look. I clamp my throat shut as her scent fills my nostrils. "Mavis and I saw it when we went on the tour to Europe last year."

"Where?" I whisper, not taking my eyes off the framed page.

"Trinity College, Dublin."

That night I read as much as I can online about the illuminated manuscript, the abbey in which it was housed, the designs, borders and letters. Then I turn my attention to the swan, reading the Irish legend of the Children of Lir. It raises more questions than it answers. In some versions the 900 year old children turn back into ancient, withered people and die. In others, they are baptized and go to heaven. What future for this Swan? I turn off the computer in frustration, hitting the treeline at a sprint before my back door even clicks shut.

Julian is persistent. I turn down invitations for coffee, for movies, for breakfast before work.

"I was wondering," he tries finally, "You know - since eating isn't really your thing, if you wanted to go to the park with Scott and I tomorrow afternoon? The weather isn't meant to be up to much, but it might be nice to get outdoors. You seem to spend all your time in here. You need a tan."

I smirk at him, and think about the miles of 'outdoors' that I experienced just before dawn. But the park sounds harmless. Unless they bring a dog. Dogs _hate_ me. I rack my brains trying to think whether Scott has ever mentioned pets. "Sure. That sounds lovely."

His face lights up, and I feel momentarily overwhelmed. What am I doing?

"Okay. We'll meet you at Nichols Field around 1?"

I nod, unable to speak. This whole farce seems like a betrayal, but I can't tell if I'm worried about betraying Edward or myself.

It's only as I approach the park the next day that I realize the mistake I've made. It's Saturday afternoon. We're not here to throw a frisbee or walk a dog. We're at the damned baseball diamond.

Scott and Julian climb out of an SUV parked up ahead of me and sure enough, Scott's wearing his uniform and bouncing around like he's had too much sugar. Julian gives me a little wave, and it's too late now. I've made this particular bed.

Edward looks up in surprise, catching my scent as soon as I step through the trees. He's wearing a dark grey henley and jeans, with a baseball cap keeping his unruly hair under control. He narrows his eyes as he takes in the way Julian is steering me toward the bleachers with a hand on the small of my back, and then Edward abruptly turns away from me and crouches down to talk to his team.

I feel sick to my stomach. I feel wracked with guilt. I feel white-hot rage.

He started this, I try to convince myself, this is not my fault.

Julian appears not to notice my discomfort, leaning in too close, _too close_, to point out various community figures, to tell me hilarious stories about the children. Suddenly Scott's up to bat, and we both cheer and clap wildly as he takes his first swing and a miss. Even at this distance I can see the blush spread up his face. My fading memories of sporting embarrassment make me want to rush out and comfort him, but he straightens up and swings again and connects with a solid whack of the bat that sends the ball flying and his tiny legs sprinting around the bases. Julian and I are both on our feet yelling and whistling, and before I can appreciate what's happening he's hugging me.

I am instantly aware of two things. Every nerve ending in my body has become a live wire, my entire skin screaming, my thirst clawing its way out. And somewhere, on the other side of the diamond, with a small anguished cry, Edward has accidentally cracked a baseball bat in half.

I push back from Julian, a little too forcefully, and his face clouds with misunderstanding. I can't breathe, I can't do anything but shake my head abruptly and leave the bleachers as fast as a human might. I abandon the car where it is, and as soon as I feel confident I'm out of sight I am running as swiftly as this traitorous body will allow.

Elk.

Elk.

Deer.

Still all I can think about is the roar of his blood, the thunder of his heartbeat.

Deer.

Cougar.

Elk.

All I can hear is Edward's pain, the snap of the bat.

I finally collapse to the dry ground like a broken doll. When I catch my breath I dial the numbers from memory. She answers before it even has time to ring.

"Alice," my voice sounds shattered, unrecognizable. "I need to speak to Jasper."

"It's okay. It's okay," she soothes. "He's right here. You're okay. It was bad for a while, Bella-bear, I won't lie. That's why I kept emailing you. But it all came right about an hour ago."

"Please," I whisper, "I don't care. Please...just...I just need to talk to Jasper."

If there is anyone who will understand this monstrous terror, this crushing disappointment, it is the Cullen who has had the least success with this lifestyle.

"I'm right here, Bella" he says, and even his voice is enough to make me relax. "I'm right here."


	16. No matter where they are

Jasper offers to come to stay for a while, but now that he's talked me back onto solid ground I assure him that I don't need him to. The late summer sun has sunk low in the sky. It's unreasonably quiet, any wildlife now more than aware a predator is lurking in their midst. Talking to Jasper feels like a homecoming. He stitches my confidence back together with tales of his past, suggestions for my future. He doesn't promise me it won't happen again.

"Alice is really glad you called, you know. It's been a long time."

I pick at the grass, thinking about my fiery, protective sister. I can imagine how tough it has been for her to abide by my wishes and stay away.

"I know. It's been hard for me too, but..."

"But sometimes you have to sort things out for yourself," he finishes. "I understand that, Bella. We all do."

I promise him that I won't leave it so long before I call again, and then I head home, surprised at the distance I managed to cover in my blind panic. I settle into a scalding hot bath, scrubbing myself clean. On the outside, at least. While I'm soaking I decide it is definitely time to man up, and I dress and call Julian to apologize.

"You must think I'm crazy."

"Not at all, Isobel. I'm really sorry I rushed you. I should have known, what with..." he trails off, realizing suddenly that _I _have never told him my story. Wise little Alice. It really is the perfect cover.

"Yeah," I murmur quietly, not having to try very hard to sound broken. "It's just too soon for me, Julian. I'm sorry."

I throw myself back into my work. Scott still comes to the library every afternoon, and he chats away to me about books and baseball and dragons, but when closing time rolls around he swings his bright yellow backpack onto his back and bounds down the steps to Julian's car.

Summer has started to fade, and I feel able to uncoil a little. Less sunny hours in a day frees me up to be less of a recluse. I plan a week's worth of events for the library for Halloween, setting up displays of books for the kids about ghouls, and werewolves, and yes, even vampires. I'm halfway up a ladder hanging paper cut-outs of jack-o'-lanterns, when Casey starts squealing my name from the back room.

"I totally did _not_ mean to open your personal mail," she says in an excited rush. "I was just opening Mrs Ainsley's pile, and there it was. It had a printed label and I assumed it was, you know, a book or whatever. But _look!_"

The padded envelope she thrusts at me contains a flat black velvet jewellery case.

"Who is it from? Is it from Mr Taylor? I thought you guys were totally over? Is he trying to win you back? He doesn't really seem like the jewellery type. I mean, he's a science nerd..."

I run my fingers over the soft velvet surface. Casey is just about bursting out of her skin.

"GOD! Isobel, _OPEN_ IT!"

I exhale and quickly prise the case open, like pulling off a band-aid. Inside lies a chunky silver link bracelet, with a single charm hanging from it in the shape of a droplet. Stone, or glass, it's hard to tell. The color is a rich, deep, coppery red.

Casey lets out a low whistle. "Wow. That's beautiful...and kind of...creepy? Is that meant to be a drop of blood? That's pretty emo."

I snap the case closed, and stuff it quickly back into the envelope.

"I...ah...I think it's from my crazy great aunt. She died a few weeks back, it must be from the estate. Do you want to help me stick up some ghost posters?"

Casey is easily distracted.

"Oh. My. God. You should absolutely see the costumes Matt and I are wearing this Friday. They are _unreal_..."

On Saturday morning, I take the bracelet to the jeweller in Merrimack. Fred Wilbert is in his eighties, with thinning hair plastered over the bald spot on the top of his head. His bow-tie is a little lopsided, and his suspenders have seen better days. He peers at the charm through his loupe for a long time.

"I couldn't be sure without sending it away, Miss..."

"Whitlock."

"Miss Whitlock. But I think this might be haematinum. If I'm right, this bracelet is priceless."

"Haemanti...?"

"Haematinum. Blood glass. It was used by the Romans in antiquity, for dishware, mosaics. Pliny the Elder writes about it. Can I ask where you obtained it?"

"It was a bequest. I don't know the history."

He squints up at me with a skeptical look on his face. Do I look like a jewel thief?

"Would you like me to send it for appraising?"

I shake my head slowly, taking the bracelet back from his gnarled hands.

"Well, if I were you, young lady, I wouldn't wear that until you've had it appraised and insured. I suspect it is worth a very large amount of money."

I thank him, and let myself out of the store. On the street, I take the bracelet from its case and fasten it around my wrist. The glass is lush, vibrant against my impossibly pale skin.

My phone rings and I answer without looking at it.

"Isobel? I...I'm so sorry to call like this. I just..." Julian sounds frantic.

"What is it? Is it Scott?"

"He was...God, I don't know. He was at the park with his friends, and I guess someone dared him to climb this giant tree and he fell."

"Where are you? I'll come right away," I assure him, already jogging back to my car.

The Medical Center is small and modern. The pale green walls and squeaky floors thankfully smell antiseptic and the air seems drenched in harsh chemicals. I worried all the way here that my thirst would be no match for open wounds.

Scott's room is on the second floor, and he is lying with his leg up in a sling, the large cast dwarfing his tiny frame. He looks pretty bad, every freckle standing out in sharp relief on his pale skin, but his face lights up when he sees me.

"I brought you cookies," I smile, waggling the cellophane bag back and forth. "I figure you'll get even skinnier lying here in this bed. We better feed you up." Scott reaches for the bag immediately, but I twitch it away, producing a brightly-colored book from behind my back, "And better still...I have a brand new Dan Gutman novel. Which do you want first?" I wave them at him teasingly, and he bites his lip and strains forward to snatch them both with a laugh.

Julian is sitting in an armchair under the window. He looks worried and exhausted, dark circles under his eyes. I incline my head to the door, and he pulls himself up wearily and follows me out.

"Look, I know you said... I just... I didn't know who to call. He's going to need surgery. It's a really bad break."

I reach a hand out instinctively and place it on his arm. "He'll be okay, Julian. He's young, strong. Kids are really resilient."

He lets out a long sigh. Even through his jacket, his pulse threads and stretches beneath my palm. This wasn't a good idea.

"You look really tired. Why don't you go grab a coffee, and I'll wait here."

Julian nods. As he trudges off down the hall, he calls back over his shoulder, "If the pediatrician turns up, can you tell him I'll just be a moment?"

Behind me a soft voice, more familiar than my reflection, says, "No need."

Julian has disappeared down the stairwell, and I turn reluctantly to face Edward. I think of another moment, a thousand lifetimes ago, when we faced each other in a clinic hallway just like this one. When I had no idea who or what he was. I asked him why he bothered saving me, and in a rare moment of vulnerability he confessed that he didn't know.

I take in his rumpled dark blue scrubs, the stethoscope he has looped around his neck, the bright gold color of his eyes - fresh from feeding. And then I fall headlong into the very presence of him, unable to move, unable to speak.

"Bella..." he whispers, my name from his lips an embrace, a prayer for relief. He lifts a hand to reach for me, but then it stutters and falls back uselessly to his side.

I don't know what to say. I'm utterly lost at this moment. Every compass point I've ever known has been erased. There's just Edward. There's only ever been Edward.

"Can we talk?" he says finally, his voice low, uncertain. "Would that be okay?"

I look through the doorway into Scott's room and Edward takes in my ambivalence.

"Not here, obviously. I mean later. Somewhere else."

"Dr Masen!" A small shudder passes over me at Julian's voice. "I was just going to see if I could call you."

Edward's eyes do not leave mine. Pleading with me to say something, anything. Pleading with my mind to give up its secrets.

I whisper too quietly and too quickly to be audible to Julian. "You can come over tonight, but I am not promising anything."

His exquisite features soften, and he closes his eyes briefly in gratitude. Then he snaps instantly back into his professional facade, reaching out to shake Julian's hand. "Mr Taylor. I've looked over the x-rays now. Why don't you come in and we can talk to Scott about what happens next?"

Julian pauses for a beat and I realize he's waiting on me. "Oh, no. You go ahead," I demur, waving him into the room. "I have some things to do. I'll come visit Scott tomorrow and bring him some more books." It's impossible to miss Julian's disappointment, or the spark of hope that lights in Edward's eyes.

It's too hard, too confusing. I turn my back on both of them.


	17. Everybody clings to their own fear

I'm home before my nerves start to jangle. Standing in the center of my living room, looking around at my furniture, the art on the walls, the dust on the carpet. I suddenly can't imagine why I suggested he come here. This is my sanctuary. This is the life I built without him.

There is a tentative knock at the door. I think about the Edward of old, content to let himself in my bedroom window while I slept, to invade my space without asking. Maybe neither of us is the same person any more. I take a deep, slow breath to calm down before I answer. He's changed out of his scrubs, and he's wearing jeans and a faded grey hooded sweatshirt. He looks like a teenager again, but I've never seen him like this: defenseless, exposed.

I leave the door open and turn on my heel. He hesitates behind me, clearly unsure if he's supposed to follow, but I ignore him and head back to the sofa. I need to sit down before my rapidly weakening legs betray me.

He sinks into the armchair opposite, a low, green number from the 1960s with wide arms that I found in an antique store north of here and immediately fell in love with. He looks uncomfortable, out of place.

"I don't really know what you're doing here."

I play with the edges of my shirt sleeves. He doesn't belong here, not in my house, not in Hollis, and not with me. Not anymore. He made that perfectly clear.

"Bella-" he starts, his eyes anguished. He doesn't finish the sentence. The silence fills the room like a fog.

"You forget, Edward," I say, my voice icier than I expect, "not everyone can read minds."

He lets out of a small, frustrated huff. "I _can't_ read yours. And that's the only one that ever mattered."

I wonder briefly if these last years would have been different if he'd been able to, if he had seen into my mind the way he could everyone else's. Would he have left then? I shake my head. There's no use in playing what-ifs. What's done is done. He wanted nothing to do with me.

"I don't understand the gifts."

He looks glum, fiddling idly with a coaster on the table beside his chair, spinning it on its end. His gaze flicks briefly to the framed illumination above the mantle.

"They were things I bought for you," he says with sigh. "After."

"No, I understand that. Peru, Dublin, Rome... I don't understand _why_. Rosalie told me what happened in Italy." A pained expression crosses his face. "If you were so hell-bent on destruction, what on earth were you doing shopping for obscure souvenirs?"

He laughs humorlessly, leaning forward, staring at the floor. "Maddening, isn't it? Even as I wanted to leave this life for what I had done to you, I could do nothing but think about you. Everywhere I went, every place I tried to lose myself, there you were. I blamed Rosalie, but the truth is I didn't need her tracking me down to remind me of you, I was perfectly capable of tormenting myself. I never stopped loving you, Bella. Not for one breath. If you'd kept the journals you'd know that."

My chest tightens. It feels like my ribcage is collapsing in on itself. "If that's true...then how could you leave?"

"I didn't believe there was a future for us, not after what I'd done. I knew you couldn't forgive me when you understood, _truly_ understood, what you'd become. The best I could hope for was that you would move on. I knew my family would look after you. Staying away was the only thing I could do."

His logic is so twisted I can't take it anymore. All the hurt and the betrayal, every agonizing moment without him, rise up inside me and threaten to explode.

"How do I get this through your unbreakable skull?" I cry, my voice too loud for the small room. I'm tired of listening to his ridiculous wallowing. "_JAMES _did this to me, not you! So he found me because I was playing baseball with you. So what? They were headed to Forks anyway! He could just as easily have taken me leaving the diner, walking between classes. Those nomads weren't exactly picky. There are only so many ways for me to say this, but it is _NOT _your fault."

He won't look up, and it is starting to irritate the hell out of me. The defeated slump of his shoulders makes me want to shake him.

"I made bad decisions. I thought if I sacrificed myself, I could save my mother. But Edward, they were _my decisions_."

He peers up at me slowly; agony and ruin rolling off him in waves.

"You don't understand," he croaks, sounding ravaged, studying my expression closely. "If I'd been strong enough, I could have stopped this. Carlisle told me how. If I'd been able to suck out the venom, you would have lived."

I suck in a surprised breath. His eyes are cautious, and he freezes, as if he expects me to break down or run. I blink slowly, revelation spreading like ice water through my veins.

"Are. You. _Insane_?"

Whatever reaction he was expecting, this wasn't it. Confusion washes over his features.

"Let me get this straight." My voice is low and even, controlled, despite the world starting to spin off its axis. "Carlisle suggested that _you_ try to suck the venom from _my_ blood."

He nods once, still looking like a deer in headlights.

"Oh for fucks sake, Edward. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! You would have _killed_ me." He starts to shake his head immediately in protest, but I keep going, "Yes, you would have. Emmett has _told_ me, Edward. What it's like when you meet someone whose blood calls out to you like mine did. He told me what happened to him."

"_La tua cantante,"_ Edward whispers.

"What?" I snap. I hate this. I hate that he is such an idiot for believing this for so long, for wasting so much _time_.

"My singer. That's what Aro called it. Your blood sang for me."

"Call it whatever the fuck you want," my exasperation levels are reaching new heights. "You _could not have done that_."

Edward looks as if he is about to object, but takes in my expression and slumps back in his armchair. We sit silently, the moment stretching out between us.

"No," he murmurs finally, looking away from me. "I don't believe I could have...But I wish to God that I had tried."

"You'd rather I'd died?" My head is pounding, I have no idea which way is up any more.

"I'd rather I hadn't let you down when you needed me."

I pull my feet up under me, tucking myself into a small ball and leaning into the arm of the sofa for balance, my mind reeling. I hear Jasper, years ago: _that's what Edward genuinely believes. And if he had the opportunity to prevent you from being damned, well, that's what he would have wanted_. The pieces of this incomprehensible puzzle are starting to click into place.

"I thought I could stay away from you. I tried for two years. But then Rosalie planted this seed of doubt in New York. When you left, she went straight to Chicago, and so I followed. I didn't know what I was doing any more. I'd lost my way. Suddenly I just needed to see you, to see if she was right, if I'd blown my chance. It was weeks before Alice slipped, and months before I found you.

"And being here was even more confusing than being apart from you. You've changed so much. God, Bella, as a human you were beautiful, but as one of us you're breathtaking! Seeing you again, like this, it's...astonishing. I realized instantly my mistake. There is no way I can exist without needing you."

I feel like something cracks inside me at his words. I focus on my lap, my eyes itch and my throat convulses in a desperate mockery of tears. He gets up and comes forward slowly, crouching in front of me.

"And I know I gave up any right to be at your side the day I left you. I know you're...you're seeing someone else now." His voice catches. "That day at the ballgame. I hated seeing you with him. My jealousy became monstrous, all-consuming. When he hugged you, the thoughts that were going through his mind...I ran." He shakes his head slightly at the recollection. "I missed three of my guys up at bat before I made it back, and realized you were gone."

I think of that day, just the memory of it lighting up my thirst, reminding me of the misery I'd endured. And he'd had no idea.

"I've let you down in every conceivable way. Not by failing to save you, I see that now, but by failing to stand with you every day of your life since. I had it wrong, all this time. I've been ruled by my guilt and consumed by self-loathing. I've been so wrong, Bella."

The ache inside of me is taking on a life of its own. I can't move, can't breathe. Edward is so close, in so much pain, and I am torn between wanting to comfort or slap him.

He reaches forward tentatively and takes my hand, passing his thumb lightly back and forth across my knuckles. It still comes as a shock that his skin is no longer cold and unyielding. His touch is incendiary, branding me. Grounding me.

He sees the bracelet, turning my hand slightly so that the dark red charm lies against the soft skin of the inside of my wrist. His expression is unreadable, his jaw tightens.

"Talk to me, Bella. Tell me. I'd give everything in this world to know what you are thinking right now. If you've...moved on...the way you appear to have, then that would be fair. I'll leave you here. I won't bother you again. But I can't go until I've asked you. Until I know I no longer have any chance. Until you tell me you could never love me, after everything I've done."

"Even if...even if all this is true," I say quietly, looking down at our joined hands, pale fingers intertwined. My voice sounds clear, steady. I have no idea how I am even forming these sentences, but there is only one thing I want to know. "How could I ever trust you? How could I ever know you wouldn't leave me again?"

Edward rocks back slightly on his heels, running his thumb lightly across my palm, causing every atom in traitorous body to collide. His expression is grim.

"I'll never be strong enough to leave you again."

I exhale unwillingly, afraid my trembling breathing will reveal my tenuous grip on my sanity.

"Every part of me is drawn to you, Bella. But I don't _know_ you anymore. All I'm asking...and believe me when I say, I know I have no right to ask...is for the chance to get to know you now."

He's right. I am no more the Bella he left in Phoenix than he is the Edward who ran. I think about my new life, my childhood in Inuvik, my adolescence in New York. I think about the life I've carved out for myself here in New Hampshire. About Julian and Scott.

I think about Edward's hand in mine, tethering me to him.

There's no going back.

"I guess...we can try."

Dawn breaks in his eyes, and he presses my hand softly to his lips, before releasing it. He gets to his feet, and reaches down to tuck a loose lock of my hair behind my ear.

"Thank you," he says, his voice rich with genuine gratitude, no hint of a smile. "I can only imagine what it costs you to say that."

Edward fills the whole room; he fills all the spaces within me and without. I feel engulfed. Confounded.

He can tell this is all I have for him for now. He lets himself out.


	18. Everybody hides some scar

I call in sick the next day, and the day after that.

I don't leave the sofa, tucked up in a small ball, letting my conversation with Edward replay in my head. Thinking about the last few years without him, it suddenly seems like both an eternity and no time at all. This is what Rosalie meant about _forever_. The liquid, elastic way that time stretches and contracts around us is confusing. Edward's absence seems both insurmountable and irrelevant.

On the third day, I shake myself from my stupor and shower until the water runs cold. After dealing with the backlog at the library, I check out a stack of new books and drive over to the clinic. Scott's sleeping, and Julian looks only marginally better than when I saw him last. He's changed into sweats and I wonder if he's been sleeping here, cramped up in this hard plastic chair.

"I called you a couple of times," he says warily, an edge in his voice. I don't know what to say. It's hard to explain that I was just sitting like a statue for two days, lost in labyrinthine thought.

"My cell crapped out. I'm sorry. I was sick in bed, and really didn't want to bring my germs here." I stack the books on Scott's bedside table.

I am still a dreadful liar, it seems, based on the look Julian is giving me. He offers a small, rueful smile. "I'm sorry, Isobel. I really overstepped. You made yourself perfectly clear, and here I am forcing my family on you."

"No, of course not. You're not...I want to be here, for Scott."

He nods slightly at my emphasis, rubbing at his forehead. I feel useless, like I should reach for him, comfort him in some way, but I know I can't get anywhere near that close. My restraint is already tight as a piano wire.

I want to offer something, but I realize I have nothing to give.

"I'll come by tomorrow."

Julian doesn't look up as I go.

Naturally, Edward is standing at the front desk as I head out. I wonder if he heard me in Julian's thoughts, heard his disappointment. He looks older today. His hair is somewhat tamed, and he's wearing a dark shirt and tie under his white coat. He also looks so unexpectedly hesitant, fidgeting with the patient files he is holding.

I feel self-conscious. I'm wearing library clothes: brown trousers and a deep v-necked sweater over a white shirt, pearls. I hear Rosalie's voice in my head: _Pearls, Bella, add five years instantly._ But my hair is wild, tugged back into a fraying elastic, and I wish I'd caught my reflection somewhere before running into him.

Most of all I wish I didn't care.

"Scott's recovering well from the surgery," he says, aiming for neutral ground, I guess.

I nod, lecturing myself in my mind to blink, to move, not to stand frozen staring at Edward's eyelashes like some besotted schoolgirl. The nurse at the desk is looking at us both with curiosity.

"I need to get back to work..." My voice is flat. I incline my head imperceptibly in the nurse's direction. This is a very small town. If he sees my gesture, he doesn't acknowledge it, but he walks me to the front doors of the clinic. It's raining and I scrabble around in my bag for an umbrella, for a distraction.

"I'd like to take you out."

His voice is too quiet for anyone else to hear, but the ache in my chest returns with a vengeance.

"Dinner and a movie?" I manage with a wry laugh. What are vampire dates supposed to look like? '_Want to go dutch on a mountain lion? Race you to New Mexico.'_ I think about the Italian restaurant in Port Angeles, but it's like trying to pick the details out of a half-developed Polaroid. Fuzzy, indistinct.

Edward smiles. "Well, I thought you could come over. See where I live."

"I know where you live," I reply with a smirk. He raises an eyebrow. "Casey, who appears to be vice president of your fan club, emailed me the link on Google Earth."

"Vice president?" Edward ducks his head with a grin.

"Well, she'll never admit it, but I am confident Mrs Ainsley would faint dead away if you smiled at her again."

His laughter is refreshing; a salve to old wounds.

I open the umbrella and step swiftly out into the rain.

"Tomorrow night?" he says softly, knowing I can hear him perfectly clearly.

"Tomorrow night," I reply as I get into my car and shake the rain from the umbrella.

Edward's house is a dark wooden post and beam place right on the Silver Lake waterfront. Tall windows face out onto the water, revealing a short pier that stretches out into the lake. The property is surrounded by trees on either side, creating a small stretch of private beach. I let out a low whistle.

"Being a pediatrician in a small town pays well, huh?"

He chuckles. "Old money."

The living area is sparse, with a long low-backed leather sofa and a full-sized grand piano. He looks around with me, and suddenly seems uncomfortable. "I guess...I may need more furniture. I haven't really..."

I squeeze his arm lightly in reassurance. "It's beautiful, Edward."

We sink onto opposite ends of the sofa, a wide diplomatic distance between us. He tells me about his time since arriving in Hollis. The job at the clinic, the children he's treated, the little leaguers he coaches. We overlap, of course, as ever. These are children I've read to, helped with homework, recommended stories.

We steer clear of the difficult conversations.

"Why Whitlock?" he asks again.

"It really bothers you, doesn't it?"

He scowls a little as he tries his best not to react.

I shrug, letting him off the hook. "You'll have to ask Alice. She gave me the documents I needed when I first got to Chicago. This is the name I've had ever since. It wasn't a deliberate slight, Edward. Not everything is about you."

Edward has a far away expression as he processes this news.

I talk about New York. The time Emmett and I spent a night hitting golf balls off the roof of the apartment into the Hudson. When Rosalie got us tickets to the Costume Institute Gala, and Emmett 'forgot' to hunt first so he didn't have to come. I don't talk about the time before Rose came to get me. I wonder how much he knows.

Eventually, Edward suggests some fresh air, and we walk down to the water. Edward throws an old quilt over the end of the dock for us, and we sit side by side, not touching, our legs swinging just above the waterline as the sky turns to lavender and dawn spreads across the sky.

"e.e. cummings had a summer house here."

The lake laps around the wooden poles below us. I think back to freshman English, my fingers toying with a frayed patch on the cloth beneath me.

"The best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says... we are for each other," I murmur. The trees on the other side of the lake are silhouetted against the slowly coloring horizon. Edward turns the back of his hand to brush softly against the back of mine where they sit between us on the dock. The barest whisper of a touch. I don't look at him.

"For life's not a paragraph," he responds, his voice, low, jagged. Of course he knows this poem. His cavernous, century-old memory probably knows every poem I've ever read. "And death I think is no parenthesis."

No parenthesis.

We sit in silence until the first brilliant shards of light begin to shatter across our skin.

"I don't know about this." I dip the toe of my boot into the water and flick it up in a rush, droplets spraying in all directions in the weak morning light.

I look over at him, and he's staring intently at me. As he takes in my expression, Edward's radiant countenance turns to stone.

"It's just...so much has happened. You weren't there...for so many things. I don't know how we make up for that. How we get past it."

These are hard words to say, but I'm thinking out loud, and before I know what's happening Edward is on his feet and tugging me up to join him.

"Come on," he urges, taking off at a sprint.

Running with Edward is exhilarating. My child-like strength is only barely a match for his pace, and it feels amazing, to stretch to the edge of my capability like this, muscles thrilling at the effort. We tear across the countryside, and I have no sense of the direction he is taking me. He sticks to tree-covered hills, state parks, and moves through inhabited areas so fast we appear to be no more than a stiff breeze.

Soon I recognize the outskirts of New York City. Em and I have run north this way to hunt a number of times.

When he eventually careens to a halt we're on East 60th. I smooth my clothing self-consciously, glad for practical boots and a general lack of flora in my hair. "Where are we?"

Edward is already take the steps up to the closest building two at a time. "This is the Grolier Club. It has one of the most extensive book history collections in the world." He holds the door open for me, and then walks to a counter where he produces an ID card from his wallet and murmurs quietly to the elderly man behind the desk. The man indicates toward the stairs, and Edward is back at my side in an instant, steering me up to the first floor. We step behind a velvet rope and into an exhibition room, with rich, deep blue carpets, and books and pages on display around the walls. Edward leads me to where an illustrated manuscript sits under low light.

"What is this, Edward?"

"The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Fitzgerald. The original is Persian, from the 9th century, but Fitzgerald was translating it in the 19th. Here...this is what I wanted you to see." Edward points to the page open in front of me.

_The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,  
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit  
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,  
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it  
_  
The detail in the illustration is entrancing, a weathered man in a turban, peering through a telescope up at the night sky.

Edward turns to me, reaching to tuck my hair behind my ear, his face serious. "I can't change it, don't you see? I'd give everything to be able to. I'm impossibly fast and strong, near enough to immortal, but Bella - the past is written. I can't unwrite it. No matter how much I want to."

My eyes close and he pulls me in to a brief, gentle embrace, kissing the top of my head and releasing me quickly.

We walk west to the Park and Edward lets us into the apartment with a key from the lockbox. It feels stuffy, abandoned, without Emmett's bellowing greeting and the noise from ESPN in the background. "They're still in Chicago?"

Edward looks surprised. "You're not in touch with them?"

I haven't spoken to Rosalie since I first moved to Hollis, but I am not about to tell him that, so I just shrug and head into my old room. The furniture is covered in dropsheets, and the dust I kick up swirls and dances in the late afternoon sun. I look out over the bare trees in the Park and wonder yet again what I'm doing. So time is an arrow, Edward and Omar may be right about that. But forgiveness is an attribute of the strong, and I'm not sure that I'm strong enough for this.

Edward reappears, jangling a set of keys and looking very pleased about something.

"Rose left the Audi," he says with a wicked smile. "Come on. I'll drive you home."

.X.X.X.

**A/N: I am posting this blind, as FFn's traffic and stats are on the fritz, so if you're still hanging in there with me, drop a review and let me know that you're out there. Thanks to my ever patient beta emmajanepringle who is travelling and yet still finding time to correct my spelling. Love to dawntwilight000 AND SeanEmma4evr for their tireless pimping.**


	19. Let me inside you

Driving into Hollis in an R8 is more or less the same as stripping naked on the common, a mistake I only realize once it's too late.

Monday morning, my coffee comes with a free grilling.

"So, you've met the new doctor, then? I hear he has a nice car." Gerald's aiming for nonchalant, and hitting pretty damn obvious. Edward's been here for months. I wonder how long he will be considered "new". Am I still the "new" librarian? My brain freezes as I try to think what to tell Gerald, my finger tracing a spidery crack in the counter Formica.

I decide impulsively to stick to the truth. "We went to high school together," I announce with a confidence I don't feel. Insecurity makes me pause, waiting for Alice to light up my phone, but it doesn't ring. Maybe this version of the story is okay, for now.

Gerald's eyebrows threaten his thinning hairline at this juicy new detail, but he says nothing. I'm saved by the bell above the door announcing the arrival of another early-bird customer, and I seize the distraction to clutch my coffee and muffin and leave.

At work that afternoon, Casey is far more direct.

"That car is _something else_, Isobel. Matt tweeted a pic, and he told me what they cost. That is _insane_, right there. I mean, is it true? That you and the Doc were childhood sweethearts? In Oregon or Seattle or whatever? That's what _everyone_ is saying."

"No, nothing like that..." Well, not for him, at least. "We just, we were in some of the same classes."

"And then you both end up here in Hollis, which is like, the tiniest town in the _world_. I mean, if that's not fate then..."

I thrust a new pile of magazines at her.

"...then...oooh, wait. Have you _seen_ these pictures!" Casey brandishes a cover showing a young, exhausted-looking starlet. "She is _such_ a strung-out loser..."

Fate. Can Casey be right? Am I delaying the inevitable? _Your number was up the first time I met you_. I'm determined to believe in my own free will, now more than ever.

There's something that's been on my to-do list for too long, so rather than sinking into an unwanted preoccupation with kismet, I head back to the staff room and pick up the phone. She answers after several rings, sounding hostile.

"Alice says you're not coming home for Thanksgiving?"

"Hello to you too, Rose."

There's a pause. I know her. Inimitable, unbending. Rosalie is never quick to admit when she's wrong. It's been too long, and I miss her strength, her strident, uncompromising love.

"It's good to hear from you," Rosalie's voice softens, chastened. "Bells, I'm so sorry. For everything."

"Don't." I don't want to get into this with her. If Edward is right, then all of it is past, done, gone. Everyone did what they thought was best. Everyone was wrong. What use are apologies?

"You've seen him?" She knows this. Alice must have seen it, and she would have told them. But for some reason Rosalie wants to hear it from me.

"Yes."

"And?" No nonsense, not interested in nuance. Rosalie only wants the details.

"And, I don't know Rose. We're...getting to know each other again."

The answer must surprise her, because there is no immediate sarcastic retort. We are both quiet for a long stretch.

"Just...be careful, Bella. Take your time."

When Edward first reappeared I felt like we'd wasted too _much _time. Now I realize how crazy that is. He needs to be patient, and I need to be sure. I think Rosalie understands that better than any of us.

Edward calls me at the library the next day. I know it wouldn't be hard for him to find my home number or cell, or really, just to turn up somewhere, so he's being deliberate about this, respecting my boundaries.

"I'm sorry, about the car," he says in a rush. "I should have realized, it was idiotic. It didn't even cross my mind until today at work."

I'm struck, not for the first time, by the strangeness of the way Edward lives: without the benefit of obliviousness; encompassed continuously by the noise of the crowd.

"What are people thinking?"

"They're pretty evenly split," he admits, "between those who think we have a mysterious romantic past, and those who think I am actually your evil ex-fiancee here to win you back."

I gasp a little at this idea, which had definitely not occurred to me before now. I'd figured I would be painted as the villain.

"I forgot, I guess. Small towns; how fast news travels. I hope I haven't made things difficult for you."

I know what he means, but I don't want to talk about it with him.

"It's fine," I say quickly. "They'll find something else to gossip about soon. We're not that interesting."

He chuckles at this obvious falsehood.

"Bella, my number's on the Clinic's website. I'll...leave it up to you. Call me when, _if, _you want to."

The line goes dead. So the ball's in my court, and this side of Edward is so completely unexpected that I'm at a loss. I'm so used to him making all the decisions for me, about me. Assuming he knows best. But he seems to comprehend now, perhaps better than I do, that they're my decisions, my responsibility.

I lose track of time a little bit, and am suddenly brought up short by Mrs Ainsley's conspicuous cough and her glare in the general direction of the clock. I hurry back into the library.

"So, I need a favor."

Sinking cross-legged to the floor, I'm trying to sort large wooden puzzle pieces into the right bags, a task proving harder than it really should given the puzzles are designed for three-year-olds. Casey is perched on the low table beside me, smacking her gum and generally not helping.

"We have our winter formal next Friday, and obviously I'm on the committee, and we're short a chaperone."

I'm already shaking my head with a disbelieving smile. She has to be kidding.

"Oh come on, Isobel," she pleads. "I just need _one_ more grown-up, and I will not ask my mother. Don't make me ask my mother. I have the most _ah-mazing_ dress, and Matt will just _die_, and I will not, not, not have my mother there cramping my style. Please! _Please!_"

Her completely insincere begging makes me giggle. "No way, Casey. Not a chance."

"Oh please, _please_. You must have memories of your school dances, your prom. Don't steal that from me, Isobel," she whines melodramatically. "Don't _deprive me_..."

The laugh slides from my face. I don't have those memories. The closest I've been to a school dance is grinding away in the clubs of New York night after night during my dark phase. It's a depressing thought. Before I realize what I'm doing, I find myself agreeing to Casey's preposterous plan, plugging my ears at her squeals of excitement.

I spend the next two weeks regretting the decision.

I'm absolutely terrified by the thought of being in a hall full of high school students, because surely someone will realize that, physically, I'm the same age. I spend a long time on my appearance, settling on a dark green wrap dress from a little boutique in Nashua, and twisting my hair up into a complicated array of tiny braids, loose curls and an unreasonable number of pins.

Walking into the school through an archway of paper flowers and balloons, my throat catches a little. I never thought these rites of passage were important, but looking around at the flushed faces, the over-applied make-up and borrowed cologne, I wonder if I have things a little backward. In my new life, there's a sudden absence of milestones. What do vampires look forward to? Their tenth college graduation? Their fifth honeymoon?

Then I realize Casey's now blindingly obvious ulterior motive, because there's another vampire in the room and he's staring at me in a way that makes me thank my lucky stars I'll never blush again. Which is probably fair enough, because I am certainly staring back. Edward's wearing the hell out of a dark suit and shirt with no tie, and he's walking towards me with a predatory look in his eye.

"If I'd known you were coming, I would have picked you up."

And that wouldn't have been awkward at all. Edward coming to my door to collect me for a school dance, like some dreadful parody of everything we missed.

Edward looks like a black and white photo from Italian Vogue, all clean lines and impeccable tailoring. He smells like lightening, like the spaces between thunderclaps. My brain is liquid. I can't think what to say, except that I need to find Casey and either hug her or throttle her. I haven't decided which.

"Dance with me."

"We're not supposed to dance, we're supposed to lurk around the edges of the hall being old and boring, preventing the punch from getting spiked."

Edward rolls his eyes at me with an amused look. "I just stopped every guy thinking about a flask on the way in. It wasn't exactly taxing."

"You!" I poke him in the chest with mock horror, "Are no fun! They are supposed to get drunk and fall down. It's part of the ritual, or something." Rituals I won't know. Experiences I won't have.

"Dance with me." He steps in close, his voice serious, placing one hand lightly on my hip, and I swear now _I am _drunk and about to fall down. My arms, suddenly disconnected from my brain, reach up instinctively and entwine themselves around Edward's neck. He draws me out onto the floor to sway to a lame power ballad warbling in the background.

"I would have taken you, you know. To prom." Edward's words are impossibly close to my ear, his breath ghosting over my skin. "Alice had already seen it. You wore a blue dress, and you looked beautiful." His hand, in the small of my back, traces lazily up my spine. "I thought you were everything then, but...you were just a girl, you...God, Bella, now? Like this?" He exhales slowly. "Bella, you're transcendent."

A small shiver arcs through me. His hand at my side toys with the tie of my dress, and the heat from his body against mine seems to light up all of the air around us.

Edward tenses, and then draws back from me. Every fragment of my body keens at the loss. He leans down and rests his forehead briefly against mine, whispering, "I'm sorry. I didn't know he was here." Then he releases me, and I look up in confusion to see Julian staring at us both. Edward hesitates for a beat, clearly trying to keep his territorial instincts in check. "I guess I'll go embarrass the kids making out under the bleachers," he says quietly, and slips away.

Julian manages a tiny, wounded smile as I walk over.

"You look beautiful, Isobel."

"Thank you."

"So. Not too soon for the ex, huh?"

Even standing a foot away, the heat of him is almost too much. My throat feels angry and raw. I wish things were somehow different, that I could be to Julian even something of what he wants me to be. But it wouldn't matter. Even if I could control my thirst, it wouldn't be long before I would need to leave Hollis, betraying both Julian and Scott with my unchanging appearance.

"It's complicated."

How such truth sounds like such a lie.

"Is he good enough for you?"

I wonder for a moment if Julian is in the camp that thinks Edward is making up for whatever abuse he inflicted in my unspoken past. I suppose in some ways he is.

"He's trying to be," I answer honestly, knowing Edward will be listening, unable to help himself.

Julian nods, and takes half a step towards me, as if he might hug me again. I hold my breath, but he thinks twice, and instead reaches out to touch my arm for a brief second. "I hope so, Isobel. You deserve someone who will be nothing but their very best for you." I want nothing more than to be able to weep openly in this moment, but my stony face remains unmoved.

"I should...I..." I can't get the words out. I need to not be here, suffocating in his disappointment. "I think you have enough chaperones," I manage finally. I leave without even collecting my coat, tugging the pins from hair as soon as I get into the car, tearing from the parking lot at a speed that would make Alice proud.

I hunt for hours, but return home craving, unfulfilled.

On Sunday night, I call Edward. He sounds relieved and surprised to hear from me.

"Come over," he says straight away, as if I might change my mind given half a chance. When I get to his house the front door is open and Edward is rummaging around in the hall cupboards. He hears me come in and bursts out triumphantly brandishing ice skates. I can't help but laugh.

"Why do you even _have_ those?"

He shrugs, looking at the skates. They look well worn, the leather creased and soft. "They were at the New York apartment, Rose loves the rink in the Park. I grabbed them while we were there."

"You're putting a lot of trust in my vampire equilibrium," I caution him.

We wrap up in coats and scarves, and he drives us to a nearby pond. Edward kneels in front of me at the edge of the ice, helping me lace my skates, and takes my gloved hands in his to help me to my feet. There is no moon tonight, leaving the pond too dark for anyone but us. The silence is breathtaking, broken by the carve and slice of our skates rushing over the ice. We race and spin, and I slip only once, Edward there to catch me before I'm anywhere near the ground. My balance, my ballast.

He takes my hand and we skate a slow, sloppy figure of eight together.

"Do you remember the day we played baseball?"

The memory is watery, inexact, but one detail stands out.

"You said you loved me. It was the first time you'd said it."

His answering smile is sad, soft.

"I was blinded by my fear, Bella. I hated that I wasn't strong enough to keep away from you, that I kept putting you in danger."

"But I loved you too." The past tense darkens Edward's expression, but I press on. "You didn't seem to understand that. I didn't _want _you to keep away."

"I didn't think it meant the same thing to you. It couldn't have. You couldn't have felt what I did. Don't you see that now?" We slow to a halt, facing each other, our breath making small, mingling puffs in the frozen night air.

I realize I can't be offended on behalf of my former self any more. I don't recall enough of what she felt, what she believed, to have a handle on whether he's right or not. I only know what I feel now. So much has changed. Nothing has changed. Edward's hand in mine, his arms around me, his breath in my ear. Just Edward. Flawed, beautiful Edward, who loved me then, and loves me still.

He reaches out and lifts the locket around my neck gently. "Carlisle has impeccable taste. May I?"

He clicks the locket open, and I look down at his fingers against the pale skin of my throat, staring at the beautiful black & white photo of Edward that lies there.

"...how did you?" He looks up at me in amazement.

"Alice. She's relentless with her albums. I asked her to find one of you where you weren't scowling. It took her a while."

"How long have you been wearing this?"

"The locket? Since Carlisle gave it to me in Chicago. I asked Alice for the photo last Christmas."

"Before I came back?"

I nod, but don't offer any explanation. I don't have words for him yet. I can't articulate everything, anything, that I'm thinking. He closes the locket, traces my scarf where it has come unlooped, lying across my collar bone.

"Esme emailed this week, to see what my plans were for the holiday." It was a careful email. I could imagine her overruling Alice, trying to be more subtle with her approach. It made me miss her desperately.

"You should go, I know they'd love to see you." Edward is genuine, but his voice holds an ache that feels unbearable.

"Edward..." I reach out to take his hand. "I think we should both go."

His eyes are wide, hope perching in his soul. He places one gloved hand against my cheek, and I lean into it with a smile. Edward's look could thaw the ice beneath our feet.

I dig my phone out to call Alice, who threatens my eardrum with both her volume and her octave. When she finally pauses to catch her breath, I confirm what she already knows.

"We're coming home for Christmas."


	20. Lay me beside you

The brownstone looks like a fairytale, with snow piled high on the windowsills and warm light burning brightly inside.

Alice throws the front door open and takes the steps three at a time, flinging herself at me in a rush of squeals. She smells like cinnamon and pine cones, and her hair is a spiky dark halo around her head flecked with glitter from the decorations indoors.

"What _took_ you so long!" she admonishes, whacking me softly on the arm. "I was so sure you'd be here this morning, and I'm so excited because I know that Jasper is going to _love_ what you got him for his present, and Esme has been baking cookies for the shelter all week but she says they're not nearly as good as yours." She is dragging me up the steps, my heavy suitcase tossed lightly over her shoulder. "Wait a minute...where's Edward?" She looks past me in confusion, as if I've hidden him behind me all this time.

"We didn't come here together."

"Oh." Her face is impenetrable. "Huh. Well, I'm sure he'll be here soon. Come on."

Everyone crowds into the entrance to greet me, and it's a whirl of hugs and laughter, and these astonishing people, this incredible family of mine, surround me with more love than I know what to do with. I can't remember why I stayed away for so long.

I've beaten Emmett twice at Madden NFL, and am helping Esme refine her cookie dough recipe when Alice comes flying down the stairs again like an avalanche and out the front door. I hear him before I see him, and Esme's whole face softens into the most beautiful expression. She tugs on my arm pulling me into an embrace, and stroking my hair softly.

"Thank you, Bella. Thank you so much."

I pull back and look at her with a confused expression. "For what?"

"For making sure my whole family is together for the first time."

I swear, physical impossibility or no, her eyes seem to be welling up, and there is a lump in my throat the size of Alaska.

Edward trails Alice into the kitchen, dropping a large duffel in the doorway. He's wearing dark jeans and chunky cream cable-knit sweater. He looks stunning, his skin flushed faintly from a recent hunt. Edward and Esme stare at each other for a long time without saying anything. It takes me a beat to realize she is telling him everything she needs to. He drops his head and smiles, finally, and then crosses the room in two long strides to scoop her up in a hug.

When he puts her down, she smooths his sweater, and pats his chest maternally. It's a moment of such intimacy that I feel uncomfortable still being in the room, but Edward's blocking my escape.

"The cookies smell pretty good," he says, looking at me for the first time, a shy smile on his face.

"Yeah, it's worrying. I suspect Esme and I may have started baking things that smell amazing, but actually taste terrible. There'd be no way to know."

He laughs softly, his arm still looped around Esme's waist. She is beaming.

Edward helps me wash and dry the remaining dishes, and we work in companionable silence.

When we finish he is surprised to find the family has retreated to the music room. Alice is lying on her stomach in front of the fire sticking photos in an album. Emmett is in a club chair with Rose curled up in his lap, and an original Bing Crosby record is on the turntable.

"Why are we in here?" Edward asks, as I drop to the sofa next to Carlisle and his tedious pile of medical journals.

Jasper glances up from the book he's reading with a puzzled expression on his face.

Understanding washes over Edward's features, and he looks at me curiously, but says nothing.

"God, that's frustrating." I grump to no one in particular. Carlisle pats my knee absently without looking up. "Seriously. Can we have out-loud conversations this week?"

Edward chuckles and takes a seat at the piano, picking out accompanying harmonies to the Christmas songs playing on the record. I could watch him play for days, his sleeves pushed back, the tendons in his arms stretching and contracting as his fingers dance over the keys.

Eventually, the album finishes and the needle skips and whirs in the center of the disc. No one makes a move to change it and so Edward begins to play his own melodies. I recognize the piece he wrote for Esme. Then he switches to something different: lyrical, gentle.

"What is that?"

"It's Liszt, _Au lac de Wallenstadt_," he responds without missing a note. "It makes me think of Silver Lake." I hear it too, the water lapping gently at the dock beneath us. The back of his hand against mine.

When dawn breaks, Alice and I go for a walk. She's wearing earmuffs shaped like Christmas snowmen, and appears to have tinsel laced through her boots. I feel like the Grinch just standing next to her.

"I'm so glad you're back, Bella," she enthuses, lacing her tiny hand in mine. "Tell me all about Hollis. I've only seen bits and pieces, because I've been trying _really_ hard not to pry. There was a dance, though, and your dress was divine."

I think about that night: the heat on my skin that bloomed under Edward's touch, the flare of my thirst. Alice gets impatient, tugging on my hand. "And the _guy_, Bella. Tell me all about the guy!"

My heart sinks, thinking about Julian's crestfallen expression. It seems unfair.

"Is this it, Alice?" I stop walking, slowing her to a halt. Thin sunlight is breaking through the cloud cover and lighting up the very tops of the waves on the lake. It causes the faintest sparkle across the bridge of Alice's nose. I try to think how to explain this to her, this crippling fear that is overcoming me. "I mean, I love you guys more than... But...are you the only people that I'll ever really know from now on? Always moving, always letting someone down. Keeping my distance from everyone so they don't get hurt."

Alice's dark eyes are wide and sympathetic. She shakes her head sharply. "No, Bella. It gets easier. You'll be able to stay in one place a little longer. You'll start younger. It's okay to meet people, you know. That's a big part of why we live the way we do.

"And Julian, he's going to be okay too. I started watching him when it looked like you would...you know." She waves her hand dismissively, without a hint of embarrassment. As if we weren't discussing my uncontrollable bloodlust and Julian's previously inevitable death. "He's going to take a transfer this summer, to California. And Scott's going to charm the pants off his fifth grade teacher, and play little league in the sun. They're going to be _happy_, Bella."

My gut twists a little at the news I hadn't wanted to ask for, but desperately wanted to know.

"We're not frozen, Bella. Things change. I found Jasper," she says, with a twinkly little smile. Then she elbows me in the ribs. "And Edward found you."

Yes, he did.

Not frozen, then. Not immutable. Just with a completely different time horizon to those around us. More like glaciers, inching slowly forward over hundreds of years.

She gives my hand a tight little squeeze. "Come on. I found this fantastic antique store that has these German glass snow angels from the 1900s. They are just extraordinary. You will _love_ them."

That night, Edward and his brothers decide to head to Minnesota to hunt big game in the Chippewa National Forest. Rosalie wants to stay closer to home, so she and I run around the lake to Manistee.

I make a mess of my last kill, and I'm crouched over a frigid stream washing my face when Rosalie catches up with me.

"You are still so _fast_," she says, slightly awed.

I laugh, and wave a blood-streaked palm at her. "And still such an amateur."

She perches on a rocky outcrop above me.

"He's so different, Bella. You have no idea." I dry off as best as I can with my scarf, looking up at her, hesitantly.

"All that pain, that darkness, he was carrying around with him. I thought it had broken him. And now he's here, and he's whole..." her voice catches.

"You give me too much credit, Rose. I haven't done anything"

"You've given him a chance," she says, reaching down to pull me out of the bone-chilling water with a firm hand. "Apparently that was all he needed."

The night before Christmas loses some of its magic when there is no sleep. Carlisle and Esme go to a midnight service at St James Cathedral, and when they return everyone drifts off to their rooms, leaving Edward and me alone. The fire has burned low in the grate, and I can't be bothered getting up from my favorite spot in front of the turntable to stoke it. Nina Simone is singing _Ne me quitte pas_, and my limbs feel lazy, fluid.

"I love this song."

Edward is lying on the sofa, reading a patient file and making notes on a pad. When I speak, he puts his work down and rolls onto his side to face me, propping himself up on one elbow.

"Do you know what she's singing? In English?"

I shake my head slowly, closing my eyes and letting the music roll around us like smoke.

"She's begging her lover not to leave her. _We must just forget, all we can forget, all we did 'til now, let's forget the cost, of the breath we've spent._"

Edward's cadence is slow, his voice mellow. His translation rhyming like the song.

"_Only you will know...Tales of lovers who fell apart and then, fell in love again, since their hearts stayed true..._"

I open my eyes to look at him, my stone heart breaking wide open. He's wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved Dartmouth t-shirt, his feet bare and his hair still damp from the shower. He looks so young, so unsure.

"_And often it's true, that flames spill anew, from ancient volcanoes... Scorched fields of defeat, could give us more wheat, than the fine April sun..._"

I sit up, kneeling before him...

"_Don't leave me now, don't leave me now._.."

... leaning over him, pressing my lips to his. The kiss is gentle, honeyed, slow. I feel it in the roots of my hair; in the curl of my toes. Edward tastes like sunset, like snowfall. When we break apart, neither of us breathes. His hands reach for my hips and he lifts me easily over him to lie pressed in against his side, tucked under his arm, my cheek against his silent chest. I place my palm over his heart, feeling his body spark and thrum beneath my hand. This, here, is home. I never want to leave.

In the morning, Alice makes a truly unnecessary amount of noise coming down the stairs, singing carols at the top of her lungs. I pull reluctantly away from Edward, sitting up and stretching, retreating to the other end of the sofa, my toes still tucked up under the warmth of his thigh. He runs a hand through his hair and gives me a small, wistful smile, wrapping his hand around my ankle and tracing a delicate pattern over the bone.

If the rest of the family is surprised to see that we've closed our physical distance, they don't let on. I make a mental note to never play poker with any of them.

Emmett is wearing a Santa hat, and Alice has felt reindeer antlers poking out of her hair, which seems sort of...gruesome, considering our diet. Jasper and Carlisle carry in armloads of gifts that have been residing under the tree in the foyer, and the day takes on a boisterous, joyful air.

Alice was right, Jasper is really delighted my gift, an original orderly book kept by officers of Co. F, 1st Texas Cavalry, during the regiment's Civil War service. It took me months of research and a truly obscene amount of money at private auction, but the look on his face as he traces the handwritten entries is more than worth it.

Alice and Jasper give me earrings that must be real diamonds, though I don't like to ask. Rosalie and Emmett give me a laptop. Carlisle and Esme, despite my vehement protests, give me a new car. But the gift that delights me the most is by far the least ostentatious. Alice wrinkles her nose in disdain, "Really, Edward? You had _much_ better ideas than this."

The ice skates have white boots, with dark red laces, and they make me unreasonably happy. I lean over immediately and kiss him on the cheek, whispering, "They're _perfect,_" in his ear. He seems just as delighted by the watch that I give him, engraved on the back with the date of my rebirth and the words _No parenthesis_. He fastens it around his wrist and then reaches out to tug me to him where we sit for the rest of the day, my back warm against the rise and fall of his chest.


	21. I've been your lover

**A/N: A few beautiful readers were concerned this was the last chapter. I wouldn't leave without saying goodbye! There will be one more chapter and a little epilogue, the way things are looking at the moment. Thanks again for all your love and support.**

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x.X.x.X.x

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At the end of each day, the Cullens observe a form of night. The energy downshifts; everyone retreats to their own spaces. Usually I find it soothing, but today anxiety swells as each person gets up to leave the room. Edward and I haven't talked at all, spending Christmas Day here on the sofa loosely curled into one another. But as Alice clicks off the twinkling Christmas lights and slips quietly out to leave us alone, Edward just stretches back to lie down, pulling me with him. I realize I'm content to stay right here, lost in thought and still, his arm warm around me as he holds me against him.

It feels like every night he held me in Forks. It feels nothing like that at all.

In the morning, he kisses the top of my head as he stirs and sits up, murmuring, "Dress warm, I want to take you somewhere."

Edward agrees that we can take my new car, a concession made all the more surprising when he sees what Carlisle bought me. "Are you kidding me?" he scowls with an incredulous expression. "Is this a _hybrid_?"

I nod proudly as I slide behind the wheel. I'd been insistent when Esme called to sound me out on my gift.

"You go from a gas-guzzling behemoth of a truck that couldn't make the speed limit, to a ridiculous, faux-environmentally-friendly mockery of a car that _also_ can't make the speed limit."

"It's a Lexus!" I retort, affronted on behalf of my new vehicle.

"Bella, it's an engine that doesn't need fuel. That's like a plant that doesn't need the sun."

"Like a vampire that doesn't need human blood?" I fire back, and we smile at each other. I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him, as we pull out of the parking garage and he directs me through the snow-covered Chicago streets. The roads are quiet. It's early, and most people are still sleeping off their Christmas revelry.

"Pull up here," he says, indicating a space alongside a barren, snow-covered park on our right. As I get out to join him on the sidewalk, I'm staggered by the imposing stone building towering over us, stretching for a full two city blocks. The doors are boarded up, but the magnificent Beaux-Arts architecture is timeless. Winter-bared ivy curls around the columns and cherubs like a network of dark veins.

"This is the original Cook County Hospital."

I pick out the name now, engraved in the weathered masonry above the front doors. Such a gorgeous edifice, standing empty. What a waste. Humanity so fixated on abandoning the past, speeding toward a shiny future. This building is a monument, a work of art.

"It didn't look anything like this on E.R." I whisper, awed.

Edward chuckles.

"Did you work here at some point?" I try to imagine Doctor Masen, dressed for another era, white-capped nurses with seams up the back of their stockings swooning in his wake.

Edward is silent, seemingly miles away as he stares up at the building. I lace my fingers through his, squeezing his hand to get his attention. He looks down at me with a pensive expression.

"Sorry, no...I...This is where I died, Bella. This is where Carlisle saved me."

I stare at him, speechless.

"I haven't been back here in years. Decades. I just...You've had me thinking about history and beginnings. I wanted to show you mine."

"I want your journals back," I respond impulsively.

It's Edward's turn to look surprised.

"I returned them because I was furious, and they weren't a substitute for you fronting up and being honest about where you'd been and why. Now, though...I want to know, Edward. Where you worked; who you knew. I have these threads from the stories the family has told me. I want to connect them."

"You can have the journals," he says immediately. "But Bella, I'd rather do it this way. I want to tell you the stories in person, and take you to the places myself."

He leans back against the hood of the car, taking both my hands in his.

"Quit your job, Bella. I want to take you to the house we lived in in Rochester and the villa Carlisle has in Tuscany. Let me show you where I lived in London in the seventies. There's an island, off the coast of Brazil, that Carlisle named after Esme. God, Bella, this world is so big."

His face lights up with enthusiasm as he talks. I think about my copies of the Lonely Planet, with their dog-earred corners and bright, hopeful Post-its. My fake passport with its empty pages. Edward pushes up off the car, and presses a kiss to my forehead before opening the door for me. "You don't have to decide now. Just...think about it."

He directs me to Washington Park. The snow has settled into ugly, icy piles, and the trees around us are black and skeletal. I pick my way carefully, trying not to slip. The fountain is empty for the winter, drifts piled up around the plinths of the famous sculpture depicting the progression of time.

"Carlisle brought me here, when I finally had my thirst under control. Taft had just finished installing it."

"It's kind of ugly." One side of the fountain is a long brace of concrete figures. They look like ghouls, straining and rushing forward. Soldiers, young children, a tidal wave of humanity charging toward an unknown end. I look at the foreboding solitary figure standing tall on the other side of the pool. "Are you saying that we're Death?"

"That's not Death," Edward responds with a laugh, "It's Father Time."

"Whatever. He's creepy."

Edward drags me into him, wrapping his arms around me and tucking his chin on my shoulder as we stare at the statue. "_Alas, time stays, we go._.."

"Time doesn't stand still for us, Edward. I'm only just beginning to understand that."

He spins me around, placing his hands on my shoulders, toying with the edges of the frothy scarf Alice gave me for Christmas.

"So come with me. See the world."

I could disappear into the smile he's giving me and never be found. The Edward I remember from when I was human was worried all the time, his features strained. The Edward I've known since his return has been careful, contrite. But here, in the washed-out winter greys of this park, is _my _Edward. Blinding, beautiful, bright like a supernova.

I realize a truth long buried. I'll go anywhere he wants me to.

Alice calls, breaking the silence, her 911 ringtone daring us not to ignore her.

"The weather's turning, Bella-bear, sun's coming out. Scoot back indoors for awhile."

She's right. In more ways than one.

On New Year's Eve, Alice insists we go out. Carlisle and Esme tell us to go and have fun, undoubtedly grateful to have the house to themselves for an evening.

I didn't pack for Alice's brand of entertainment, but she drags me to the closet in my bedroom to reveal a stunning black dress with a plunging neckline. The top layer is raw-edged, sheer, with tiny sequins scattered sparsely over it. Alice eventually concedes that I can wear boots, instead of the teetering heels she bought me, but forces me to sit for an undue amount of time fussing with my hair and make-up.

When we come back downstairs the guys are waiting by the front door, and I can't take my eyes off Edward, his crisp white shirt, or his thin black tie.

Emmett miraculously produced tickets to a party at Coq D'Or in the Drake Hotel. The lush red leather and dark wood is like something out of Hollywood's golden age. "I was here the day this bar opened," Edward whispers with a grin, as he steers me through the crowd. "The day Prohibition ended."

We have seats at a table tucked into a corner, with a great view of the musicians. When I quiz Emmett he spreads his hands wide as if to say, naturally, this is all his doing. But Rosalie just rolls her eyes and mouths, "Money talks."

The siblings spend the evening reminiscing. Stories about New Year's past, mortifying outfits, ill-chosen holiday locations. Jasper has me in stitches with a tale about a girl so drunk she didn't notice anything different about Emmett, spending the evening glued to his side until Rosalie forcibly ejected her from the bar. I feel like I'm gasping for breath once Rose gets on to the time Alice and Jasper decided to get married again in Vegas, and the Elvis impersonator turned out to be drunk.

As it nears midnight, the bar becomes more crowded and drunken revellers press against our table as they dance and cheer. The smell of blood around us is a rich, thick wall of heat. Edward senses my growing discomfort, and suggests we leave.

"We can't go now, it's nearly midnight!" I hate being the weakest. I feel a fresh wave of empathy from Jasper, who smiles at me from across the table.

Edward shakes his head, and says, "It's okay. I have something else in mind."

We say goodnight to the others and head through the lobby to the elevators. Edward produces a key card to access one of the upper hotel floors. The suite he lets us into has the most stunning views, downtown Chicago lit up like Alice's Christmas tree, reflecting and shimmering in the lake stretching before us.

"This is beautiful."

"I thought you might need a break. I can't imagine how hard it must be for you in crowds like that."

"Thank you." He's right. I feel like I can breathe again.

"My motives aren't entirely unselfish. Crowds like that are tough for me too, even after all this time. It's like the party is happening inside my skull. Being around you is restful."

Even inside the suite, we can hear the noise start to escalate in the streets and bars below, and suddenly the night sky over the lake is a riotous garden of color as the fireworks display begins. The lights hang impossibly long overhead, sparkling and disintegrating just as the sound reaches us.

"Happy New Year, Bella."

The kiss is soft, all-encompassing. My hands find their way up to the back of his neck, his hair. There's a moment, just a split-second, where one of us should draw back and maintain this easy, comfortable truce between us. But then that moment is gone, and I realize I wanted it gone, and his hands are on my hips and I'm clutching at his jacket as if it were the only thing holding me up.

Edward's kiss is molten, his touch blazing against my skin, and I'm shoving at the jacket and yanking impatiently at his tie. He backs me toward to the bedroom, but we collide with the wall with a noisy thud, a painting knocking loose and crashing to the floor. My dress is suddenly in too many pieces, a drift of dark silk and sequins around my feet. My hands grasping at the smooth planes of Edward's back, the muscles tensing and lifting and pressing. His hands are under me, in me, on me. His mouth tracing, following, leading. Every place we touch courses with lightning.

Edward seems to have more presence of mind than I do, finding the doorway to the bedroom at last and laying me down across a soft down comforter. The blanket is cool against my back, Edward a fever dream above me. My teeth graze his earlobe, my lips press against his chest, his name is the only word left in my vocabulary.

His hands are everywhere and nowhere, my tongue catching the faintest taste of salt. It's as if we had rehearsed this for years - every moment aware of the other, every movement synchronized - and I let out a little gasp when I feel his teeth against my throat. There is no danger now; we've come that far.

"God, Bella, I love you," he rasps, pressing forward, pressing home.

Edward says my name over and over. My voice is caught somewhere, some place it can't be released. I feel more than I have possibly ever felt, across every inch of my skin. This is _more_ intense, _more _powerful, _more _vivid. Edward has always been more.

I realize how things can change. I change, melting into Edward's touch. He changes, shifting, groaning under my hands and tongue. We are changing, we are moving. Together.

And then we're there, stepping over this precipice together, completing this sentence for one another, his fingers laced through mine. He's beautiful above me, surrounding me, my immortal love. And then he collapses forward, leaning over me as we descend, breathing each other's air.

"You're the whole universe, Bella," he whispers eventually, rolling slowly onto his back and taking me with him His fingers running through my hair. "You're the sum of all things."

I curl my leg across his, wrapping my arm possessively around him. He's right. This is ageless, this is ceaseless, this is always.

This is us.


	22. From the womb to the tomb

Emmett helps me pack the car. For arriving with next to nothing, we seem to be leaving with an awful lot of stuff.

"I've made you three full playlists of music that will annoy the crap out of Edward," he says with an evil grin, tucking an iPod into the glove box. "One of them is specifically designed for Cleveland."

I roll my eyes at him as I jam the last of Alice's mystery bags of clothes into the boot and slam it firmly, hoping nothing breaks.

"Trust me, little B. It will definitely be worth it." He swings an arm around my neck and musses my hair, and I elbow him sharply but ineffectively in the ribs until he releases me.

"Rose said you guys might meet us in Rome?"

"I'm pushing for Tuscany. Rome in the summer is disgusting. You can't go out during the day and the place is packed with tourists. We'll see you somewhere in Italy, though."

I think about the last time they were in Europe, and how much has changed since then.

Edward comes down to the parking garage with yet another giant box and I throw up my hands in exasperation. "Where does this all come from? There weren't this many Christmas gifts for the entire family!"

He shrugs his shoulders and opens the back door of the car looking for some space. "Esme said it was for the library. It's heavy, so I'm assuming it's books."

"It is," Alice confirms, bouncing along behind him with a sports bag that is quite literally half her size. "And these are the new little league uniforms. They are _darling._"

I give her a guilty smile. The Cullens' generosity knows no bounds.

For the first time our farewells are easy, light. None of the fear, hurt or misunderstanding of previous separations. Jasper promises to try and keep Alice's travel planning in check. "I'll aim for less than ten revisions of the itinerary," he says with a wink. Alice pulls a disgruntled face. "If I let Edward do it, it will be hopeless," she says with conviction. "Bella will wind up being dragged through a hundred dingy opera houses and depressing, gothic cathedrals."

Esme's embrace is fierce and filled with love. "When you get back, Bella, we'll talk about where we live next. Carlisle and I are thinking about Montana."

"Really?" Emmett offers Carlisle a high-five, which he ignores with a withering look. "I _love_ that place. Bells, it has its own elk herd! Coyote _and_ bull moose."

Esme loops an arm through mine. "It's really beautiful, Bella. I think you'd like it. The main ranch house is all wood and stone, and the view is stunning. There are several outbuildings, and we wouldn't all be under each other's feet."

Rose appears with my laptop case and stows it under the passenger seat. "Montana State has a campus nearby," she says to me. "You could go back to school if you wanted." Rosalie remembers well our time in New York; how I used to love curling up in the library with pencils twisted in my hair. I can't even picture Montana, but suddenly it sounds like the best idea in the world.

My goodbyes with the family are tight hugs and elicited promises about emails and Skype and European must-sees. Their goodbyes with Edward are silent and sincere, and by the time he's finished with each of them he looks overwhelmed. I throw him the keys to the car as I climb into the passenger seat, and we pull out into the icy Chicago streets.

A vampire road trip is really only half as much fun. There are no slushies; no beef jerky or Red Vines. No disgusting gas station restrooms, no roadside motels. But there's a bright, cold winter sun overhead, my feet wrapped in fuzzy green socks propped up on the dash. And there's Edward beside me at the wheel, telling me stories about the riots at the Democratic Convention in the sixties while he traces patterns on the inside of my wrist.

My heart hurts for him. "You were alone for so long."

He looks across at me in surprise, unconcerned as ever about taking his eyes off the road.

"Not completely alone, no. But... It doesn't matter now."

I think about Jasper: _But it's just that...history. It ceased to mean anything the day Alice found me in that diner. _Jasper's had over a century to process what happened with him, his time with Maria, and then of course, Alice. I'm not in that place yet. It still means something to me. It matters that Edward was alone; it matters that _I_ was alone. His fingers trace up my forearm, pushing back my sleeve, following where my veins once flowed. Every place our skin connects is a covenant; every touch is a knitting of broken bones. I've ceased to wonder how much damage was done, though I know I will carry some phantom pain for at least a little while longer. Still, when you have forever in front of you, that seems okay.

When the sun starts to sink toward the horizon, we stop on the outskirts of the Allegheny National Forest. The snow is thick on the ground, an undisturbed white quilt wrapping itself around the trunks of the trees. Edward opens my door for me and offers me a hand out, but when I'm on my feet I'm almost instantly knocked off-balance as he presses me back against the car and kisses me soundly. My eyes close. Edward feels miraculous. Like strength, and comfort, and abundance. Like I could make a home right here in the taste of him, with his hands on my shoulders and the snow crunching underfoot.

When I open my eyes again, Edward is beaming at me. Then he turns and takes off at a dead sprint, and it's all I can do to collect my scattered wits and follow.

The hunt is fast and primal, tearing through the undergrowth. Blood relieves the burning itch in the back of my throat, but my satisfaction is only average at best. Winter feeding is hard work and unfulfilling. I almost wish I needed the cold air to tear through my lungs. Sometimes I crave the feeling of being truly alive.

When I catch up to Edward, I realize we're in a completely different part of the forest. Old-growth trees surround us, towering overhead.

"They're white pines," he says, laying a hand against the bark of the nearest tree and craning his head back to stare up at its branches. "Over 400 years old. Believe it or not, this part of the forest is called Heart's Content."

The trees are beautiful. I think idly about climbing one.

When I look back at him, I'm startled to find Edward in front of me, down on one knee.

"I want to do this here," he says quietly, "where I can't hear anyone but you."

I'm rooted to the ground in shock. He takes my left hand in his. The forest around us is utterly still.

"I know this seems sudden, Bella. And I will wait as long as you need me to, I swear. But I've walked every day of this life toward you. The only time I was crazy enough to try and go in another direction it nearly destroyed me."

His touch is an accelerant, spreading across my skin. His eyes are vibrant, fresh with new blood. His pose is a petition.

I am struck mute.

"Bella, it didn't destroy you. You didn't founder. You grew more brilliant, impossibly beautiful, unfathomably strong.

"I knew the moment I saw you in Hollis that everything I thought I'd felt for you when you were human was a lie. It was the palest imitation. When I saw you, _really_ saw you - without the cloud of bloodlust and the aching exertion of restraint - the veil was torn. There was no going back."

I know exactly what he means. I know with certainty that there has never been any way to turn back. There has only ever been this moment, in this clearing. White and green; unspoiled and ancient. Just this eternity; just this breath. For better or worse.

"I know I've hurt you. I know I've lost your trust. If you will let me, I vow that I will spend every moment we have together making that up to you. I love you, and I will never give you a reason to doubt me again. If you need space, you can have that too. But my life is your life. I don't know how I could have ever thought otherwise.

"Isabella, Isobel..._Bella_. Will you marry me?"

I don't know if I believe in fate - if I was always destined to this eternal life, to Edward. But I know that I believe in him, in this complicated, flawed man kneeling before me. And I believe in us, in the warp and weft of the life we will make together.

The answer starts deep in my chest, taking on a life of its own, asserting itself. The answer dances from my lips and resounds around the clearing.

"Yes."

The ring Edward slides onto my finger is perfect. Understated and simple, with a diamond solitaire that glints in the last of the fading daylight.

And then everything's a blur of motion. I'm dragging him to his feet, his jeans wet from kneeling so long in the snow. He's pressing against me, against this tree that's older than both of us. Here, in this place: the heat of his kiss, the feel of my hand through his hair. The commitments we make to one another.

"I love you," I whisper against his skin, against his tongue. _I love you, I love you._ His broad palm against my ribs. My knuckles knocking against his belt buckle. The bark at my back.

We are flush with the snow, white on white. Both illuminated in the soft light that streams through the 400 year old trees. I'm thinking that Edward and I are like these trees, bright and alive, time inconsequential. Then he does something with his tongue that makes me arch back with a gasp, and I realize then that I _am _alive. More alive than I ever was when blood coursed through my veins. I am awake, I am aware, I am whole.

I want to tell Edward this, but instead I press my lips hard against his own. Then I flip him on his back and laugh at his wide eyes. It seems my newborn strength is still lingering - or I just managed to catch him off guard. His surprise fills me with a joy so strong I wonder if I've ever actually felt joy before.

He laughs and pulls me down to him with a growl. We surge together and feel nothing but each other, not even the cold.

It's only much later that I realize where we are and begin to comprehend the meaning of what has happened.

"I should call the others. I mean...will Alice have told them?"

Edward shrugs. "Jasper and Emmett already know. I talked to them about it when we went hunting before Christmas."

"Really?" I can't picture Edward discussing this with his brothers. They've been apart longer than I've ever known them together.

"You're going to think this is strange, but I wanted to ask Jasper's permission."

My eyebrow arches in disbelief.

"No, it's not the name thing. I'm not hung up on that," he assures me, adding quickly, "although I can't wait for you change it. It's that...Jasper has been your mentor and your protector. He's been there for you every step of the way. I can't ask Charlie Swan for your hand, Bella, but I wanted to be sure Jasper approved."

There is something so old fashioned, and yet so respectful, about this gesture, that I'm at a loss for words.

I reach into my pocket for the phone and dial a familiar number.

Edward looks at me, incredulous. "You really want to deal with Alice and wedding planning right now?"

I turn my back to him.

"Of course not," I laugh. "But I do have another sister who might want to know."

Rose answers on the second ring, her happiness for me radiating from miles away. Edward takes my hand as I answer her questions and we walk out of the forest, the same as we were when we entered, and yet entirely different.

"_Plus les choses changent plus elles restent les mêmes_."

I tune Rosalie out for a minute, turning to catch Edward's eye. I wonder if something has changed, if somehow he can read my thoughts, but then I realize. We are going to be together forever. He doesn't need his gift, he knows me better than anyone. I smile and focus back on Rose, saying, "No, God! Does Vera Wang even _make _three-tier taffeta affairs? You're almost as bad as Alice!"

Edward's laughter warms my heart.

Hollis seems small, but comforting, like visiting your elementary school years after you left.

Edward drives slowly for once, and I wonder if every place we live will feel this way. I wonder if we'll ever come back to Hollis, decades from now, when there won't be anyone to remember an Isobel Whitlock and an Edward Masen.

He pulls into my driveway and kills the engine. I wonder if Carlisle will keep the house, dropsheets covering my shabby, beloved furniture. Or if he'll rent it out, if some new family will have to get the granite bench in the kitchen fixed.

We carry in the contents of the car, and Edward lingers in my hallway, one hand on my hip and the other running his thumb over the ring on my finger.

"Stay," I whisper, before he can suggest leaving. I never want him anywhere else but at my side.

"Of course," he says with a devilish answering smile. "You're the one with the bed."

.x.x.

Mrs Ainsley's mouth presses into a thin line when I tell her I am resigning, but when I reveal that I'm engaged to Edward, Casey squeals with delight.

"You see, Mrs. A? I _told _you they were meant for each other!" Mrs. Ainsley is clearly trying to hide both her amusement and her approval but it only works half-way. Casey sighs happily. I wonder if she's been reading in the romance section again, a section I know probably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Mrs. Ainsley's own fondness for heaving bosoms and ripped bodices.

Stifling my own giggle, I get an idea. "You know, Mrs. Ainsley, now that I'm leaving, it might be nice to have someone keep up the children's section part-time. I can't think of anyone that knows the ropes better than Casey. The children know her and trust her already."

Casey's eyes go wide with delight and I laugh.

Mrs. Ainsley sniffs and looks Casey up and down. "We'll have to have a discussion about boys and proper library voices." Then she sighs. "And there's still no budget for fairy wings or tutus."

I could almost swear Mrs. Ainsley winked at me while saying that.

Friday is my last day, and I'm running out the clock at the front desk, checking books and clicking on links to insanely overpriced hotels as Alice emails them to me.

"You're leaving," a small voice accuses. Scott has a stack of books on the counter that he's hiding slightly behind, as if it's taken all his courage to confront me like this.

"I am. I've got a chance to go and see some places I've never been to before. It's an adventure."

He scowls, remaining tucked behind his books.

"But I've been thinking about it, and I thought it might be fun if I sent you a postcard from every city I went to." I reach beneath the counter and pull out a poster tube. "And this is a map of the world. I thought your dad could help you put it up on the wall at home, and then when you get the postcards from me you can stick a pin in the city on the map."

I had the map laminated to withstand all the pinpricks and future I imagine for this little boy.

Julian comes inside to pick Scott up. I start for a moment, not having seen him up close in so long.

Scott runs up to his dad, and begins telling him all about the map. His excitement is light as a summer breeze, and as hard to ignore. Julian smiles at Scott, then asks him to go wait in the car. Scott nods and looks solemnly back at me.

"Be careful," he says. "And if you learn how to tesser, I expect to know." I smile thinking of him reading A Wrinkle in Time, curled up in bed with a flashlight. Scott walks over and shakes my hand. Then he is gone.

I shake my head but Julian is still there. He's looking at me strangely. Then he sighs.

"I guess we just won't be able to get rid of you that easily."

I realize what I've done. I will be writing postcards to Scott. Not Julian. I will be staying in their lives, and I didn't ask permission.

"I'm sor-" I start to say before Julian cuts me off.

"Don't. Apologies aren't needed. Things change, right?" He still hasn't looked me in the eye. "Just promise me you'll write him. He's not old enough to understa - you know, he gets his hopes up and - I just don't want him to have an empty map, is all." The last words come out in a rush and I'm glad I have the sharp senses now to catch it all.

I reach for his hand, steeling myself for the heat of his skin. "I promise, Julian. I won't let Scott down."

At that, he looks me in the eye.

"I know you won't," he almost whispers, and it's so easy to see how things could have been, if I'd never met Edward. But without Edward, I would never have come to Hollis, and when you're dealing with things like forever, at some point you have to stop playing endless games of _what-if_.

Squeezing his hand gently, I try to smile at him. "There might be a lot of postcards," I warn, trying to lighten the mood.

Julian tries to smile back. "Maybe one day we'll follow your path. If I win the lottery, I'll let Scott pick a place every month, and we'll go."

I know then that when Edward realizes what I'm doing he will find a way to create a scholarship to allow Scott to travel the world with his dad. "You'll have to send postcards in return," I tell him, half-serious.

He just smiles and drops my hand.

"Goodbye, Isobel Whitlock."

He is gone. And so is Isobel Whitlock.

I finish up at the library and go to meet Edward; Bella soon-to-be Cullen goes to meet her fiancé. I find him at the hospital, taking a last minute look at patient charts.

"Let's go," I say, pulling at his arm. "Right now."

Edward looks puzzled.

"You know our flights to London aren't for another week, right?"

"I have somewhere I want us to go first."


	23. Epilogue

"Are you sure they don't mind us being here?"

"Alice was ecstatic. Jasper asked us to burn the sheets when we left."

It feels strange being back. The cabin seems smaller than I remember, but cozier, less like a jail. I dump the pack I am carrying down on the porch. The supplies are almost entirely for show so that the pilot who flew us up here wouldn't get suspicious. The view is still stunning, even in the fading dark.

Edward slips his arms around my waist, leaning his chin on my shoulder and looking out at the vista with me.

"I will regret it every day, that I wasn't here with you."

I place a palm against his cheek without looking around.

There are things we both regret.

I turn in his arms and kiss him briefly, my hands flat against his chest.

"No, that's not why we're here. We're sharing history and beginnings, remember? We're not lingering on regret."

Edward runs his hand down my arm, his fingers encircling my wrist. He brings it up to his mouth, and presses his lips softly to my silver scar.

The future spreads out in front of us now, a sunrise dawning on a bright spring day. A whole world to discover. With this man. This beautiful _soul_, whose life I up-ended and unravelled and completed. Who, with one split-second decision, started _my_ life anew.

"Come on," I grin at Edward. "I'll show you the boulder I threw at Jasper the first week we were here."

.

x.X.x.X.x

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**A/N: Just a very short note to say thank you to my amazing beta emmajanepringle, who really did bring out the beauty in this little story.****I also want to say thanks to everyone who has reviewed it and recced it. For a first timer in this fandom, your support has been so encouraging.**


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